PREMISE
A young, gay Black man, rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside.
THE GOOD STUFF
JEREMY POPE- Pope is an actor I’ve largely been unfamiliar with. He is a very accomplished Broadway performer and is held in high esteem. He does very well here, but this is one of those cases where the performance overrides the material. This performance is strong enough to carry this film all the way to the end, though. I don’t know if that seems like backhanded compliments or not, I really don’t mean it to be. I hope to see more of him very soon. He’s good.
BOKEEM WOODBINE- Woodbine has been around for around 25 years or so. I remember seeing him in a film called Jason’s lyric back in 1995, and I hated him for a very long time. He was one of those actors I couldn’t stand for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on.
I don’t know precisely when this happened, but he’s become one of the more reliable character actors around for about the last decade or so. He’s been in terrible movies and always the bright spot. And although I don’t find this movie to be nearly as terrible as some of the things he’s done, he once again shines brighter than the rest of the people on screen. His character in this film is a lot like Louis Gossett Jr.’s character in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN….. Except way, way, more psychotic. He is charming, soft-spoken, and a great villain time in and time out. It is rather bizarre for me to speak such compliments about this man and have all of them be absolutely true.
THE BAD STUFF
ABSENCE OF EXPOSITION- What really hurts this movie is the lack of a backstory for the characters that we’ve been introduced to. This movie wants us to live in the moment and go beat to beat with these characters that clearly have deep psychological reasons to be the way they are.
I respect the fact that they try to cover as much as they can by having each of these characters speak about their past experiences to each other in a way that would never really happen in real life simply because the movie doesn’t have the time to cover those bases. This particularly hurts the relationship between the main character and his mom, played by Gabrielle Union. Union’s only in this film sporadically, and her scenes with Pope are great. There’s just too little of it, unfortunately.
THE UGLY STUFF
WORTHLESS GOALS- What really, really, really, REALLY hurts this film is the journey of the main character himself. A character who physically and psychologically goes through as much hell as can possibly be inflicted upon him to apparently try to satisfy and/or impress the plethora of homophobic people that he comes across. His hazing by his military peers is in fact so extreme, but I couldn’t help to root for him to quit the military. And I know that’s not the goal of the film.
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This film is one of those examples that should have been a television show rather than a feature film. The hazing is, unfortunately, the centerpiece of the film and is important to cover given that this is the semi-autobiographical story of the director of the film, Elegance Bratton.
But there are so many different deep topics that get skimmed over that may have led to a deeper and more emotional tail than the one we’ve been presented with here.Â
THE INSPECTION is in theaters now.
