"The Inspection" -- Movie Review

 

On the closing night of the 60^th New York Film Festival, I attended the U.S. premiere of the drama “The Inspection”.

Synopsis

When a gay Black man joins the Marines, will this help to repair the relationship with his mother?

Story

Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) is a young Black man who has been homeless for nearly a decade – this is because his mother (Gabrielle Union) has disowned him for being gay.  As a last resort, he decides to join the Marines, hoping that will finally give his life some meaning and value.  Boot camp is brutal, but when French’s sexuality is discovered, it becomes even worse.  Determined to make a go of it no matter what, French takes the abuse and stands up for himself whenever necessary.  What he doesn’t know at first – but eventually learns – is that there are many like him already in the military.

While French’s fellow recruits are anti-gay (and specifically anti-French), his drill sergeant Laws (Bokeem Woodbine) is openly anti-Muslim as a result of serving shortly after the events of September 11, 2001.  As a result, Laws is particularly harsh on a recruit who is a devout Muslim when he spots the young man praying.  The other recruits decide to gang up on French and try to sabotage his training so he will be discharged from boot camp.  This doesn’t stop French from having an attraction to some of the other Marines, with whom he believes he has found some affinity. 

As boot camp draws to a close, it is beginning to look like French might successfully graduate, despite the lack of support from either his fellow recruits or his own mother.  But will French’s mother be proud of him?  Will she even attend the final graduation ceremony when he actually becomes a Marine?  For weeks now, he has been writing her but hasn’t gotten any response.  Not knowing if she is alright or simply ignoring him, and despite knowing she may be irked, French decides to call her to find out why she hasn’t corresponded with him.  Eventually, he summons up the courage to beg her to attend his graduation ceremony.  Will she attend or continue to ostracize her son?  

Review

As Elegance Bratton’s first narrative feature film, “The Inspection” is certainly meritorious, albeit flawed.  One might assume that the expectation and intention of the film is for the audience to feel that this mistreated character has a triumphant conclusion to his story; however, under further scrutiny, this inference might be questionable.  For one thing, French does not find his own way – it takes the grueling discipline of the Marines (i.e., the federal government) to transform him into a killing machine in order to provide structure in his life and convince him he has purpose.  French’s change is not of his own doing; he doesn’t change himself, the Corps forces the transformation on him. 

It would not necessarily be unfair to characterize “The Inspection” as the gay version of “An Officer And A Gentleman”; in the latter movie, the Zack Mayo character declares, “I got nowhere else to go!” – the exact same thing can be said for Ellis French.  Unlike “An Officer And A Gentleman”, there is no romantic subplot – instead, there are moments where there are allusions to sexual situations.  On a positive note, there are good performances by both Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union.  Pope is quite successful at making French a sympathetic character for whom an audience can root; Union’s performance as a cruel homophobic mother is courageous. 

In a post-screening conversation, writer/director Elegance Bratton discussed the autobiographical nature of “The Inspection”.  He said that the portions of the movie concerning his mother were true but most of the other incidents are not.  Bratton regrets that he was never able to actually reconcile with his mother in real life; the film was green-lit in mid-February of 2020 and she passed away just four days later.  Following his time in the Marine Corps, he went on to study at Columbia University, then took filmmaking courses at New York University’s Tisch School of The Arts; while there, he made a short film which got him some television work, essentially launching his career.