Writer-director Elegance Bratton makes a promising, passionate narrative debut with The Inspection, a film loosely inspired by his own story as a gay man joining the military, a tough, self-flagellating process for someone who had only experienced his sexuality as punishment.
His previous film, the documentary Pier Kids about three homeless LGBTQ+ youths in Manhattan, had already intersected with his own experience as someone who was also queer and homeless but here he zeroes in more acutely, making Ellis (stage star Jeremy Pope) a double for himself at 25, rejected by his cruel, religious mother (Gabrielle Union) and living in a shelter in New Jersey. It’s 2005 and driven by a need to feel like his life matters, he follows wall-to-wall news coverage of the war on terror all the way to the Marine Corps, an act of desperation that he hopes will save him.
