The Inspection review – military autobiography makes for an impressive directorial debut

Writer-director Elegance Bratton makes his feature debut with this stylish and melancholy piece. Based on Bratton’s own life, The Inspection takes place in 2005 – during the US military’s period of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy in relation to gay recruits – as young gay Black man Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) joins the Marines to escape the homelessness he was forced into at 16 after his cruel mum kicked him out of the house for his sexuality. It is a film that doesn’t offer much you haven’t seen before, but it’s put together with enough confidence and feeling to mark Bratton out as a talent to watch.

After a brief introductory sequence showing us Ellis’s life at a homeless shelter and a terse encounter with his horrible mother Inez (Gabrielle Union in an impressively poisonous performance), The Inspection spends the majority of its runtime in Marine bootcamp. Ellis impresses his compatriots and commanders early on with strong showings in the physical challenges of basic training, but he can’t hide his sexuality for long, his otherness soon making him a target for both the other recruits and brutally nasty drill sergeant Laws (Bokeem Woodbine). Suddenly, Ellis doesn’t just have to prove himself as a soldier, but survive stinging hazing sessions at the hands of his homophobic brothers-in-arms.

Bringing his own experience to bear, Bratton gets a lot of mileage out of the invisible but all-important line between hyper-masculine military bonding and open homoeroticism, a terrifying space for Ellis for navigate that seems effortless for the straight recruits. The scenes of homophobic violence are effectively nasty, especially a near-drowning at the hands of Laws, yet the almost obligatory camaraderie of a military unit also provides a semblance of a safe space for Ellis, albeit only once he’s demonstrated a capacity for furious violence.

In The Inspection’s boldest scenes – powered by a memorably ominous score – the barracks take on the music and lighting of a gay club, Bratton taking a Beau Travail-esque approach to the male closeness that a military has to foster. There’s a compelling and dread-inducing danger to these moments even as Ellis looks to be more at home, the possibility of a slip-up in his façade leaving a tangible fear. Pope is excellent in these moments, always calculating just how much of himself Ellis can let out in any given moment, sometimes stone-faced, sometimes soft with the other bullied recruits, and sometimes just taking a private moment to briefly exist as his authentic self.

Outside of the centrepiece stylistic flourishes, though, The Inspection can feel a bit generic. There’s not much in its treatment of homophobia or military training we haven’t seen many times before and it doesn’t have the raw emotional kick of the similarly-themed Moffie from a couple of years ago. The downbeat ending has a real sting of authenticity to it, but Bratton’s direction is noticeably better than his writing, which hits more than a few flat notes, especially in moments of exposition. As a calling card for a new filmmaker, though, The Inspection is a mostly impressive one, viscerally externalising an unpleasant internal struggle.

The Inspection is released in UK cinemas on 17 February.