When the five comrades of Private First Class Franklin Bean (Charlie Sheen) with Roosevelt Stokes (Laurence Fishburne) in front make the soul-march, which refers to a locomotive, Bean does not know what happens to him. He cannot step with them! In fact the racial tension in the prison with a majority of five blacks come to the surface at the end of the movie in a tragic way. But Master Sergeant Otis V. McKinney (Martin Sheen) is right when he asks Bean to call him sergeant every time when a subordinate answers to him. There are only officers at the trial in this movie; but it is the colonel who gives Bean permission to work on the windmill and from that moment on the unexpected happens: Bean and his five comrades form a team, something McKinney cannot appreciate. At the end they commit insubordination when McKinney triumphantly comes up with an order that the windmill is a forbidden domain. Private First Class Harold Lamar (James Marshall), in fact a corporal, does everything what his superior McKinney asks from him but at the end he will not be awarded for this and neither will Bean be rewarded for saying the truth at the trial. The criminal background of the six prisoners is not very clear: are they really criminals who have committed those serious crimes that McKinney claims? This is important while it gives another description of the black prisoners and it allows in any circumstances for McKinney to be severe. Bean does not accept a proposition for friendship from McKinney, but it is not clear why McKinney should want to settle peace with a simple private. After all, he is in charge of the military camp.
