‘The Inspection’: Toronto Review

Dir/scr: Elegance Bratton. US. 2022. 95 mins.

Writer-director Elegance Bratton draws from his experiences going through Marine boot camp as a gay man in The Inspection, an emotionally charged drama with familiar contours but a perceptive eye about masculinity and the military. Jeremy Pope is touchingly vulnerable yet defiant as a recruit who has signed up because he has nowhere else to go, hiding his sexuality but quickly learning that his secret won’t stay hidden for long. Comparisons to pictures such as An Officer And A Gentleman and Full Metal Jacket are inevitable — Jarheads is actually referenced directly — but Bratton’s depth of feeling elevates the material, suggesting that, for the filmmaker, there’s something intensely cathartic and therapeutic in this retelling.

The strong central performances mitigate the picture’s more conventional aspects

Scheduled for release in the US on November 18, this Toronto premiere has a marketable hook that should appeal to arthouse crowds. Set in 2005, when American forces were years-deep into their post-9/11 occupation of Iraq, the film could inspire conversation around LGBTQ+ service in the military, which remains a controversial topic.

Pope plays French, who is in his twenties and living in a homeless shelter after being kicked out by his homophobic mother Inez (Gabrielle Union). Craving some sort of stability, French decides to join the Marines, which means he must endure a physically and mentally gruelling boot camp run by the demanding drill sergeant Laws (Bokeem Woodbine). French insists he’s not gay, but an erection he experiences in the communal shower reveals the truth to his fellow recruits and now he must withstand his peers’ scorn alongside the punishing training.

Bratton’s narrative feature debut — he previously made the documentary Pier Kids —  hits several expected plot points as we see French clash with the bullying Laws and slowly grow in confidence as he moves closer to graduation. But because The Inspection is based on Bratton’s own military training — he served from 2005 to 2010 — there’s a specificity to this story that keeps springing small surprises. On a superficial level, the film is unique simply because it is shown through the eyes of a closeted recruit, who has erotic fantasies about the men around him while trying to pretend he’s straight. But in a more profound way, The Inspection subtly interrogates how boot camp tries to beat out weakness, but also tenderness, in these recruits, and what effect that has on them.

In short order, French’s sexuality is found out, and while being gay doesn’t disqualify Americans from serving in the military, it’s viewed as abhorrent by his fellow recruits, and he is ostracised by them. Because French has nothing else in his life, he refuses to quit, his determination earning the respect of some around him — in particular, Rosales (Raul Castillo), a junior drill sergeant who takes an interest in this young man. A soulful connection develops between the two, but French has to be careful: does Rosales share his romantic feelings? 

Although some of The Inspection is predictable, the strong central performances mitigate the picture’s more conventional aspects. Pope plays French not as a faceless symbol of gays in the military but, rather, one searching individual who wears his heart on his sleeve — and who won’t let Laws change that about him. Cinema has its share of iconic drill sergeants, and it’s a credit to Woodbine that he doesn’t try to outdo those who have come before. Instead, his Laws is refreshingly everyday in his brutal, unbending demeanour. This makes Laws mysterious but also compelling, adjectives that equally apply to Castillo’s portrayal of Rosales, who exhibits enough faint traces of sweetness that French (and the audience) wonders if there might be something more going on. If The Inspection’s narrative arc seems fairly familiar, how French’s tentative bond with Rosales resolves is one of several instances in which Bratton zigs instead of zags.

The film’s mid-2000s setting allows for some commentary about the War on Terror and America’s post-9/11 mindset. These points are made in an offhand manner — more as shading, not grand political statements — and likewise The Inspection’s observations about male bonding, whether gay or straight, have a delicacy to them. But Bratton is a little more pronounced when he focuses on French’s strained relationship with his mother. The film is dedicated to his own mother, who died two years ago, and Union (without much screen time) makes Inez a complicated figure — and one whose love French so desperately desires. Laws may be an intimidating drill sergeant, but as far as French is concerned, he’s got nothing on a disapproving mother.