Rating: NR | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: September 19th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Director(s): Carmen Emmi
Writer(s): Carmen Emmi

One, two, three, one.

We don’t know how long Lucas (Tom Blyth) has been the key undercover officer in a sting operation to entrap gay men at a local mall, but his conscience is now getting the better of him. Not just because he is ruining their lives for money (few ever risk going to court and just pay their fine), but because he’s beginning to see himself in their faces. So, while Carmen Emmi’s feature debut Plainclothes never overtly states as much, we must wonder if the job is actually the reason Lucas has begun to question his own sexual identity.

His sergeant explains that arrest numbers are down, so they’re going to train a rookie to add some variety in case Lucas is burned. We therefore must assume he’s been doing this for a long while. Why take the job if he’s gay? Maybe he thought it would quell his attraction to men—an attempt at exposure therapy to twist his mind into associating homosexuality with criminality to get men off his mind so he might finally be able to love his girlfriend (Amy Forsyth’s Emily) as much as she does him.

Either way, the opposite occurs. Lucas finds himself wishing he could enter that stall and act on his instincts rather than simply wait for the mark to expose himself and be arrested. So, after inevitably succumbing to the guilt of villainizing them for having the courage to do what he can’t, it’s only a matter of time before he gives in. Even then, however, he might not be ready to go through with what he’s been clandestinely teasing. Fear is a strong emotion and finally kissing Andrew (Russell Tovey) might just make it stronger.

A period film set in 1990s Syracuse, Plainclothes is conscious of the threat a man like Lucas is under. From loved ones. From his job. From society. The only way to truly know this life is to jump in the deep end and yet he’s keenly aware of how that can backfire considering what he does for a living. A note with Andrew’s phone number therefore becomes evidence of perversion. Meeting at a movie theater holds the potential for judgmental looks from other patrons. Being honest about his feelings with anyone could destroy everything.

That anxious insecurity becomes the driving force of the film’s suffocating sense of tension in present-day. Shot in widescreen with Lucas donning facial hair, this device starts with him arriving at his mother’s (Maria Dizzia’s Marie) house for New Year’s. It’s there that he loses an unopened letter in the snow for which his desperation to find it quickly reveals the sender and the inherent danger to anyone else reading it. And it’s through his paranoia of his truth being exposed that the memories of his journey towards this day unfold.

These flashbacks play in full frame aspect ratio with brief vignettes shot under a grainy Hi8 haze spliced in for added aesthetic flavor. Lucas is clean-shaven while working the mall, conversing with his mother (about his ill father Gus and her leech of a brother Paul, played by Gabe Fazio), and interacting with Emily. We learn about his state of mind and obvious unease courtesy of a scratching tick. We realize he only has one person he can talk to and even they can’t be fully trusted. And we witness just how urgent meeting Andrew proves.

Emmi takes us back and forth from the current New Year’s Eve to those prior months unspooling in chronological order. The letter getting lost has Lucas thinking about how he reconciled his feelings for Andrew with the mandate of his job. Seeing Paul’s new, much younger girlfriend (Alessandra Ford Balazs’ Jessie) puts his mind on Emily and the love they share (the final scene with Blyth and Forsyth is unforgettable). And someone else getting to that letter first whisks Lucas back to the fallout of his attempt at romance.

This is where Plainclothes shows the narrative strength to match its formal execution. A lesser film would treat its characters’ ages as an excuse for love at first sight rather than a late-stage coming-of-age story—complete with unseen pitfalls and unavoidable heartbreak. While 2025 is hardly a utopian haven for equality when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, many are able to go through the internal chaos Lucas endures on-screen in their teens. In the 90s, though? We’re talking twenties, thirties, and beyond with a lot more to lose.

Andrew is therefore more than just a love interest. He’s also an unwitting mentor insofar as walking Lucas through the realities of being closeted in a city that would kill him if he wasn’t. Lessons about AIDS. Living dual lives. Making encounters about sex rather than love if the latter isn’t possible. The other side of that coin, though, is that Andrew’s insight and protective nature only endear him more. Lucas can’t help falling for him hard. The attention. The passion. The joy. He walks himself to the edge of an emotional cliff.

It culminates in an intensely violent catharsis as all these experiences roiling around within Lucas reach their breaking point via a misinterpretation that finally causes him to choose a side. In his personal life. His career. His yearning to breathe for the first time in years. It’s a fantastic turn by Blyth as he treads through the innocence and pleasures of desire while existing in a walled-off prison of prejudice pretending to be morality. The path forward won’t be without its devastating mistakes, but every step Lucas takes is by necessity.

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Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey in PLAINCLOTHES; courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.