The Inspection

A new marine struggles with the restrictive, homophobic environment of the US military in Elegance Bratton's semi-autobiographical drama.

Welcome to the US military, a khaki-coloured world of gritted teeth, repression and rigidity confined to corridors, showers and fields. This is the world of Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection, where the upper ranks are in the business of constructing the next generation of furiously servile automata on a sweaty production line. The imposing colonel Leland Laws (Bokeem Woodbine) takes this image further, in a moment hewn of grim determination and bitter spittle – “Our job is not to make Marines, it’s to make monsters.”

But Ellis French, elegantly embodied by Jeremy Pope, is not a monster – he’s a damaged 25-year-old fresh of the streets, who wants his homophobic mum to love him, and for the other Marines to stop hazing the fuck out of him. Based on a young Bratton, the film unravels from the director’s memory, thinly fictionalised and with all the rawness that comes with trying to reenter one’s tormented younger brain.

Although Ellis meets and sometimes exceeds the physical requirements to enlist, he fails to disguise his sexual orientation and is relentlessly degraded and abused by both instructors and fellow recruits because of this. Tensions run high and performances are tight. Claustrophobic cinematography, replete with locker-room shots of athletic bodies as the camera follows Ellis’ repressed desires, ensure that the cabin fever and pure discomfort of the future soldiers’ experience is emphasised to the point where the fault isn’t entirely theirs.

They are pushed to their mental and physical limits, denied contact with the outside world bar a single phone call and magazine clippings of tits sent in the post. This snarling machismo, situationally enforced and encouraged, is seldom punctuated by moments of humility, though these do increase as the end of their incarceration nears. The most sympathetic character is Rosales, played expertly by Raúl Castillo, the only instructor who has time for Ellis. Tough but understanding, he acts as something of a guide.

Set shortly post 9/11, the film reflects some caustically racist sentiments that were prominent as well as the homophobia. Middle Eastern recruit Ismail (Eman Esfandi) is also tormented, told that he looks like the enemy who they’ll shortly be aiming their guns at. Ellis, compassionate despite the lack of compassion he receives, comforts Ismael. His sensitivity is clearly not warped by the institution, and that is a kind of victory. But The Inspection remains unsure of itself, and of its message.

The military is neither glorified nor thoroughly criticised – not that it must be either, just that hints of both are hard to juggle. The hero not only survives, but succeeds in becoming a part of the system that has made him so unwelcome, and has gone on to make an ambiguous film about it – are we to feel heartened or dismayed? Although the recruits stand up for Ellis in the face of his mother’s brutal rejection, have their opinions changed? That starchy, problematic phrase ‘formative experience’ springs to mind…The Inspection is a powerful yet unsettlingly inconclusive account of an important, haunting period in a man’s past.

Published 13 Feb 2023

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