Well-meaning, yet sometimes exasperating, ‘Inspection’
Elegance Bratton, a gay man who, while homeless, joined the Marines — partly to gain back the love of his estranged mother, partly to make something of himself — has made a film about his experiences.
However, the main character in his feature film debut is not Elegance Bratton but Ellis French ( Jeremy Pope); and that’s part of the problem with “The Inspection,” a well-meaning, sometimes moving, but at times exasperating movie.
What should be an intensely personal story has instead been “dramatized,” with a screenplay that feels as if it has been workshopped to death; you can feel the story beats coming before they happen. Add to
that much of the movie is set during boot camp, so threequarters of the movie is someone yelling obscenities at a recruit — mostly Ellis, of course — so it’s an ear-splitting experience designed to break down the audience in order to create empathy for the Bratton/ French character.
Of course, that kind of verbal abuse has been a staple of
movies with extended boot-camp scenes, and the silver lining here is the main drill sergeant, Laws, is played by longtime actor Bokeem Woodbine, whose work from “Jason’s Lyric” in 1994 to a villain in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in 2017 has earned tremendous respect within the industry. Here, he joins Louis Gossett Jr. (”An Officer and a Gentleman”) and R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket”) as memorable foulmouthed order-screamers.
Other nice performances include Gabrielle Union (who also can be heard in Disney’s “Strange World”) in a small role as Ellis’ mother, a woman whose intense homophobia clashes with her love for her son; Raúl Castillo (Zack Snyder’s “Army of the
Dead”) as Laws’ lowerranked drill sergeant. who befriends Ellis and
has a secret of his own; and Pope, a star of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series
“Hollywood.”
Bratton’s stint in the military ran from 2005
to 2010, during the “don’t ask, don’t tell,” post-9/11 era, when the
U.S. was in both Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the best features of “The Inspection” is Bratton’s point that prejudice — not just against gay people, but also women, Muslims and other minorities (all represented by Ellis’ fellow enlistees) — is a feature, not a bug, in society; and that the military deserves credit for forging disparate beliefs and prejudices into units where soldiers must work together.
Bratton has made a film that isn’t necessarily anti-military — he is no doubt proud of his service — but pro-humanity. In a sense, Ellis is going through his own personal boot camp. Perhaps the film should have been called “The Introspection.”