Rating: R | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: November 18th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Elegance Bratton
Writer(s): Elegance Bratton

Our job is not to make marines. It’s to make monsters.

Disowned by his mother (a very good Gabrielle Union) for being gay and on the streets for five years, Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) decides at twenty-five that his only chance at a future is through drastic change. If he was going to end up dying in an alley with no one to mourn him anyway, why not join the Marines and risk dying in uniform, as a hero? So, he enlists during the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era, endures the homophobia and abuse at the hands of fellow recruits and a drill sergeant (Bookem Woodbine) operating under the imperative that he mold monsters rather than soldiers, and eventually finds an identity with which to move forward.

Inspired by his own experiences, writer/director Elegance Bratton pulls no punches with The Inspection. He’s not looking to sanitize what occurs behind closed doors, whether they shield the world from the hate that runs rampant in private homes or the toxic culture meant to break down and build-up young men and women in the armed forces. It’s all there from near-death tragedies born from entitlement and power to xenophobia towards American Muslim enlistments to finding the balance between protection and betrayal within an environment fostered by those who believe the distinction is black and white despite it being populated by a newer generation that refuses to agree.

While the movie does its best to center French’s trials and tribulations as a not-so-closeted gay man doing everything in his power to graduate amongst a handful of men who’d enjoy him failing, it doesn’t necessarily do enough to elevate what ultimately proves just another abusive boot camp depiction. That’s not to say the moments that allow the character’s homosexuality to be a focal point (the strained relationship with his mother and the honest conversations with another drill sergeant, as played by Raúl Castillo) aren’t memorable enough to help the whole stand apart. The injustices remain familiar. The attacks remain predictable. And the “oorah” sense of family that’s always born from the fire does little to make us forget the reason those flames grew so high.

Pope is great, though. Bratton puts a visual stamp on certain scenes (especially dream sequences) and allows for emotional nuance to appear whenever you think things have moved into the binary realm of happy or sad endings. It probably helps that this is his life, but his refusal to pretend that any step forward doesn’t come with a price means something. It being his story to tell also lets me excuse the fact that its jingoistic notion of using the military as a replacement for family feels like a marketing vehicle. I’m glad it gave him that and that the armed forces give many lost souls purpose. But those positives will never outweigh the negatives glossed over throughout as “tough love” via communal silence and/or bare minimum contrition.

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(L – R) Jeremy Pope and Raúl Castillo in THE INSPECTION. Credit: Patti Perret.