Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union star in The Inspection in Theaters Nov.11
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A soldier’s transformation from soft and guileless recruit to battle-ready warrior has long been a setting for movies like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and An Officer And A Gentleman. Writer-Director Elegance Bratton makes a fresh contribution to the canon with his first narrative feature The Inspection which follows the ordeal of new recruit Ellis French (Jeremy Pope), a wannabe Marine who is young, willing, and able but also gay, to the discomfort of pretty much everyone around him.
“Have you been convicted of a felony? Are you a communist? Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?” These are the requisite questions barked by French’s drill sergeant, to which French replies with a resounding: “No, Sir!!” That he lies to others and himself is a matter of survival. This is a time when the American military enforced a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And French dutifully tries to force himself back into the closet even as he desperately longs to break through the world.
It’s a lifelong struggle that began before boot camp. French’s own mother (Gabrielle Union) is homophobic and had kicked French out of their home, leaving him homeless since he was 16.
Based on Bratton’s own story as a gay man joining the military, The Inspection promises to be more than a cookie-cutter boot camp survival story, but a brutally honest story about a gay son longing for the love of his homophobic mother and his triumph as a homosexual man in the military’s hypermasculine world.
