Bill Clinton’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, while intended as a progressive compromise, upheld the belief that the inclusion of queer servicepeople "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”. It created a quietly hostile environment in which queer people were forcibly closeted and one under which writer/director Elegance Bratton began his military service as a gay man in 2005.
This semi-autobiographical story sees Bratton re-live that period through the eyes of his avatar, Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), who we find in a homeless shelter in Trenton, New Jersey, nearly a decade after having been thrown out on the street by his evangelical mother. Convinced that the road he’s travelling will inevitably end in his demise, French enlists in the Marines and begins basic training under the sadistic eye of drill sergeant Laws (a suitably nasty Bokeem Woodbine). What follows is, initially at least, a by-the-numbers retread of the traditional boot camp brutality formula, complete with an abundance of shouting, running, and enough pull-ups and press-ups to reduce Joe Wicks to tears. French proves up to the challenge, though, thriving in his new role and only narrowing losing the position of squad leader to cocky nepo-grunt Harvey (McCaul Lombardi).
However, immersed in the corps’ highly-charged, hypermasculine environment, French is overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. While maintaining a half-hearted heteronormative exterior (pretending to call his ‘girl’, while leaving a message on his mother’s voicemail), he begins to indulge in erotic fantasies — strikingly shot through a woozy lavender haze by DOP Lachlan Milne — where the communal shower room becomes a sex club, full of sultry, sweaty men eying him back with lustful eyes. It’s in the midst of one such flight of fancy that an untimely erection outs French in front of his entire squad, resulting in a cruelly orchestrated campaign of beatings, ostracism and abuse that culminates (in a chillingly casual manner) in his near death.
The Inspection may be by the book, but the layers of personal detail and emotionally resonant core lend it an authenticity that hits home and hits hard.
But while there’s sadism and victimisation to spare, this isn’t Full Metal Jacket and French is no Private Pyle. Bratton’s memories of boot camp aren’t uniformly bleak despite being tinged with abuse; there’s a sense of belonging that, despite himself, French gravitates toward — a purpose he desperately craves, wrapped in an identity untouched by internalised shame. Portrayed with sensitive determination by Pope, he never lets the military grind away his sense of self, whether in knowingly “gaying up” his camo paint or refusing to be cowed by his abusers. (“Boot camp didn’t make me straight,” he says defiantly on graduation day). Even at his lowest ebb, there are points of light in French’s ongoing darkness, whether in quiet solidarity with a similarly outcast muslim recruit (Man Esfandi), or the empathy of a lone instructor (Raúl Castillo), whose compassion for French defies easy labels.
Somewhat constrained by its familiar framework, The Inspection may be by the book, but the layers of personal detail and emotionally resonant core lend it an authenticity that hits home and hits hard. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the bookend scenes between Pope and a superb Gabrielle Union as French’s unrelentingly callous mother. Broken down by the marines both physically and mentally, it is her affection that he craves most of all, and it’s a mother’s bigotry, more than the military’s, that clearly stings Bratton the most.
