Written and directed by Elegance Bratton and based on his own life story, “The Inspection” comes out of the blue to knock you off your feet. It’s a gay “An Officer and a Gentleman” for a new generation and a new world.
Ellis French (a remarkable Jeremy Pope) is a young, homeless gay man with, we assume, a drug history. When he knocks on the door of his prison guard mother (an unrecognizable Gabrielle Union, also a producer), she acts like she’s about to be assaulted. “Are you in trouble?,” she asks, lighting up a cigarette. She lays out newspaper for him to sit on, no doubt fearing he has bugs. You know the history between these two is terrible. Ellis, 25, declares that he is enlisting in the Marines, a sign at least that he knows he needs to turn his life around. She has never been able to accept that her son is gay and is scornful of the prospect of his becoming a Marine.
Known as “French” to the drill instructors and his fellow recruits, French fits in relatively well at Parris Island, South Carolina, at first, although he feels compelled to pretend his mother is his “girl,” when he leaves a voicemail in the presence of others. But an incident in the showers that he could not control marks him as gay, and he is ostracized and forced to stay in his own space. His group’s leader Harvey (McCaul Lombardi, “American Honey”) despises French and uses homophobic slurs in reference to him. In a shocking scene, French is severely beaten by his fellow recruits.
