Recensioni di Metacritic

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.

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.

Positioned as a work of autobiography from first-time director Elegance Bratton, The Inspection is a flawed, if highly compelling promise of a new talented dramatist in American cinema.

Pope's performance is so raw, so honest, that we're with him every step of the way.

It’s in the film’s queerest moments that things feel most inventive, narratively and visually, as Bratton steps most firmly outside of the hemmed-in army drama formula and finds ways to make his film sit and thrive in the Venn diagram between military machismo and homoeroticism.

The Inspection isn’t a bad movie. Rather it’s a disappointing slog because the arduous journey it sets up should have offered greater returns.

The film is too invested in treacly cinematic optimism for its character dynamics to feel sketched out beyond their basic narrative function.