Critic Reviews

The Inspection isn’t a perfect movie, but there are times when it feels like it’s tantalizingly close.

There’s brutality but also an understated hint of poetry in the way Bratton tells his story from deep inside it, making beautiful use of Baltimore experimental pop group Animal Collective’s richly varied electronic score, which often plays in gentle counterpoint to the harshness of what’s unfolding.

The director hits no false notes. He knows firsthand the feelings each scene should convey, but he also has the skills to render them accurately.

The metamorphosis that Bratton explores, and that Pope embodies — the way Ellis both changes and remains ever faithful to himself — is subtle, bittersweet and beautiful.

This is a human story, as messy and complex and maddening as any ever told, and while Bratton makes it his own (how could he not?), the generosity with which he shares it with us make it special indeed.

Bratton, though, is not solely interested in a litany of struggle. He fills The Inspection with style, with spiky humor and alluring edge. It’s a promising feature debut.

Pope gives a career-igniting performance.

Bratton’s depth of feeling elevates the material, suggesting that, for the filmmaker, there’s something intensely cathartic and therapeutic in this retelling.

In its most moving and offhandedly momentous moments, The Inspection becomes a chronicle of not just persecution and survival but also solidarity, in which the all-American brotherhood in which Ellis finds himself actually can function as advertised.

Bratton, who has an eye for compelling framing and unexpected beauty, has made something more complicated than a treatise against the power structures enshrined in the military, though he’s very aware of them.