Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) was as much an injustice to the military as it was an injustice to all the men and women who could have served with distinction if they had been allowed to do so without having to hide their sexual orientation.
The Inspection is loosely based on writer-director Elegance Bratton’s own experience as a recruit at Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) Parris Island when DADT had already been in effect for more than a decade. The funniest line in this otherwise intensely sad movie is one which Bratton himself probably never uttered in boot camp.
Through Jeremy Pope as Recruit Ellis French, we see that Bratton must have had quite a rough time in boot camp, not being able to blend in as smoothly as other gay men in the military.
Even if the exact details of what Bratton went through don’t line up perfectly with what French goes through in this movie, it is clear that in real life Bratton suffered much undeserved punishment.
My experience at Parris Island was actually quite easy. I don’t need to qualify that or hedge that in any way. In hindsight, I realized that I hardly ever doubted I would graduate, and I never doubted I’d leave Parris Island alive (there were plenty others doing the doubting, though), whereas for French both of those things are very much in doubt early on.
Both Bratton and French also suffered quite a lot before enlisting. In the movie, we see French among many homeless men, seemingly spontaneously deciding to enlist in the Marine Corps. But first, he must get this birth certificate from his mother, Inez (Gabrielle Union), who kicked him out of her pathetic apartment when she discovered his sexual orientation.
The Marine Corps would hardly seem a haven from such prejudice, and it wasn’t back in those days. DADT was still quite new when I reported to MCRD. I remember my recruiter actually had to cross out the question “Are you a homosexual?” in the paperwork. In my immaturity, I wanted to answer that question, but I had enough sense not to. A small yawn would have been an appropriate response to such immature and irrelevant bravado.
French arrives at Parris Island by bus and is greeted by a screaming drill instructor before even getting a chance to debark. Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Laws (Bokeem Woodbine) at first seems to be your garden variety idiot drill instructor yelling nonsense at the recruits. But as the movie goes on, we begin to suspect Gunnery Sergeant Laws might actually be a certifiable psycho. One of the recruits even says so.
There’s another drill instructor (Stephen Thaxton, uncredited) who’s almost as crazy and sadistic as Laws. During rifle marksmanship training, that drill instructor grabs Recruit Ismail (Eman Esfandi) and places the unfortunate boy in the line of fire of a white recruit’s rifle. The drill instructor seems to suggest it would be okay to kill Ismail since Ismail might be an al-Qaeda terrorist anyway. Fortunately, the white recruit refuses to use his rifle in that way.
It might be a spoiler to tell you that this movie only covers French’s time in boot camp. After that, if he graduated boot camp, he would have gone on to basic combat training and then combat photographer training before deploying to Afghanistan, or, more likely, Iraq.
And yeah, French is aware of the possibility of being sent to a war zone. An old homeless gay man makes sure French is aware of that possibility. But French does not want to wind up an old, gay homeless man. One way or another, the Marine Corps will help him avoid that fate.
But of course he has to try to get through boot camp first. The physical training is demanding. French is up to it, and he is even a serious contender to replace the drill instructor’s favorite as squad leader.
French’s first major problem occurs in the shower. French finds Drill Instructor Sergeant Rosales (Raúl Castillo) just dreamy. French fantasizes about the drill instructor beckoning the recruit to a secret adjoining shower for gay men.
The other recruits notice French’s erection. Rosales tries to allow French a discreet exit, but Laws belays Rosales’s order. Laws effectively authorizes three recruits to beat French up. The violence of this scene is, or should be, the main thing that justifies this movie’s R rating (but of course the MPA are more bothered by the sexual content).
Still, French perseveres. And he receives quite a bit of encouragement through an inappropriate sexual encounter with Rosales. To be absolutely clear: for the two of them to have sex is wrong not because they’re the same gender but because one man is a drill instructor and the other man is a recruit.
Rosales probably rationalizes this inappropriate behavior as the only way to counteract Laws’s bullying. And Laws explicitly rationalizes his unkind treatment of French: either the recruit will wash out or he will become more than a fighting man, he will become a fighting monster. According to Laws, that’s the kind of Marine the Marine Corps needs to fight terrorism.
The scene at the military chapel might be shocking to those who are not familiar with the important work being done by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Thinking back to my Sundays at the Catholic chapel at Parris Island (almost a cathedral, it seemed to me), I’m reminded that there was some serious backsliding on religious freedom under President George W. Bush (R, 2001 — 2009).
I distinctly remember a drill instructor saying “If you’re not Catholic or Protestant, you just became Protestant.” But any recruit who did not want to attend either Catholic mass or Protestant worship had the option to simply stay in the squad bay, brushing up on military history, polishing their boots or whatever. I’m not sure, I don’t recall ever missing mass at Parris Island, I saw it as a welcome break from the grind of training.
The option to skip church call was still available in Bratton’s time at Parris Island, but this movie makes it seem like a lot of recruits were completely unaware of it. In the movie, Recruit Esmandi and Recruit French endure many boring sermons in which the preacher makes dubious parallels between the kingdom of God and the military chain of command. It isn’t until one of the drill instructors reluctantly volunteers this particular nugget of information that Esmandi and French stop going to Protestant services.
The title of the movie makes it seem like an inspection, in which commissioned officers inspect the recruits in their service alpha uniforms one by one, is the major event of this movie, and that everything before it builds up to it. But the actual titular inspection takes up very little screen time and it’s a foregone conclusion.
The special features on the DVD lack subtitles, but I do very much appreciate this DVD has any special features at all, given the current trend to not include any on DVDs. The subtitles for the movie should have been reviewed by a military consultant, but the one mistake I noticed does not warrant any deductions from the star rating.
I give the movie ★★★★☆, and same for the DVD.
The Inspection is rated R “for language throughout, sexual content, some nudity and violence.” There is objectively more violence in Full Metal Jacket, but the violence in The Inspection is harder to stomach.
P.S. The 4671 military occupational specialty (MOS), combat cameraman, and others in that range were deprecated in 2017 in favor of 45xx MOSes per MarAdmin 484/17.