The Inspection

This autobiographical look at one Black gay man's experience in Marines boot camp will leave you shaking with anger and joy.

I remember when the debate about gay people serving in the military first became a thing in the 1990s. I talked to the one close friend I had who was in the service at the time. He’s one of the most kind-hearted, open-minded people I know, and I’d kind of had assumed he would be OK with it.

Hard no, was his response. It would do more harm than good, he said. My friend, like most people, felt the time just wasn’t right.

Eventually, it was.

“The Inspection” is an autobiographical account of writer/director Elegance Bratton’s experience during that murky in-between time of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” As a 25-year-old in 2005 when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still very much in the insurgency phase, he volunteered for the Marines.

Even if all you know about the Marines is what you’ve seen in movies, you’re aware that it’s the hardest of the hard red-meat, Y-chromosome cultures there is. So needless to say, a young self-described “queen” who’d been living on his own since the age of 16 did not have an easy transition. This is Bratton’s story, with Jeremy Pope standing in as his alter ego, Ellis French aka Frenchie.

It’s a riveting performance by Pope, who I, like many, first noticed in “One Night in Miami” a couple of years ago. His Frenchie is incredibly vulnerable, yet also brave and, strangely even to himself, proud. He plays a character who was at the end of his rope when he joined the Marines, living in a homeless shelter with nothing to lose — his only meaningful relationship being with his mother (Gabrielle Union), who kicked him out of the house when she found out he was gay.

Frenchie expects boot camp to be harsh. He knows that he’ll have to hide his sexuality and keep his head down. He’s prepared to play that game.

What he didn’t know is that his drill sergeant, Leland Laws, would be a straight-up sadist out of the mold of R. Lee Ermey’s bellowing bully in “Full Metal Jacket.” Laws isn’t that loud, preferring to growl and threaten, and initially sees Frenchie as one of the more promising recruits, willing to push himself beyond his limits. It’s a chilling and magnificent performance by Bokeem Woodbine.

But then Laws finds out the young man is homosexual. He makes it his special mission to harass and intimidate Frenchie, including siccing the hateful platoon leader, Harvey (McCaul Lombardi), to lead the bully brigade against him. It ranges from hazing and ostracism to stomping beatdowns.

In a twisted way, Laws doesn’t so much hate Frenchie for being gay as seeing it as just one more brutal tool to sculpt a do-anything killer. If Frenchie can make it through boot after all the torture he puts him through, Laws figures, then he’ll become an unstoppable soldier.

“Our job is not to make Marines. It’s to make monsters,” he says.

Frenchie finds a few allies along the way. There’s Ismail (Eman Esfand), the lone Arab Muslim in the group who’s facing his own obvious harassment issues. Label (Andrew Kai) seems a little smarter and more outspoken than the rest. Brooks (Aubrey Joseph) is a gangbanger type whose bravado hides a sensitive side.

But the most important relationship he has is with Rosales (Raúl Castillo), one of the junior sergeants. He’s a contemporary of Laws, both got their start in Operation Desert Storm, and he knows it’s necessary to break these young men down in order to build them back up into Marines.

But Rosales also recognizes when lines are being crossed, and takes steps to push back without risking getting “smoked,” discharged, himself.

Union, nearly unrecognizable under de-glamorizing makeup, has a small part but packs sharp punches in every seen as someone who’s had to live with disappointment so long, she can’t easily recognize its opposite. In most movies a character like hers would have a predictable arc, but here the mother acts as a fully human being capable of contradictions and stubborn blind spots.

I’ve been continually bothered by overlong dramatic films of late, as if those making them think they can pummel us with cinematic quantity what they can’t rate in quality. So it’s good to see Bratton, in his first feature film, understanding how to keep things taut and lean at 95 minutes.

“The Inspection” is a marvelous debut by Bratton, and Jeremy Pope should garner some awards notice for his invested performance. This isn’t the sort of film that’s easy to watch, but you feel uplifted because of the experience.