‘Plainclothes’ Review: Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey Smolder and Sweat as Closeted Gay Men in Bristling Police Entrapment Drama

A movie all too palpably real for those of us who can remember years of shame, fear and secrecy, Plainclothes follows a young cop assigned to a sting operation, arresting gay men cruising for sex in a mall in Syracuse, New York. His willingness to pose as bait dissolves when he starts facing his own sexual identity while getting obsessive about a similarly closeted hook-up. First-time writer-director Carmen Emmi’s aesthetically overworked use of low-grade video and distorted sound is intrusive, but very fine performances from Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey keep you glued to this sexy, sad, authentically gritty drama.

The strains of OMC’s “How Bizarre” coming over the speakers in a shopping mall instantly position the story in the mid ‘90s. A young cop, Lucas (Blyth), sits in the food court, serving as the tasty bait for gay men on the prowl. An exchange of eye contact, a nod of the head or a faint smile are enough to signal interest. Lucas then follows his target into the public restroom, where the glances, usually via mirrors, become less furtive.

There are tricky rules Lucas must follow — no talking to the suspect, no physical contact and no joining him in the stalls. His task is to make the man feel emboldened enough to expose himself, at which point Lucas walks out and gives a sign to his colleague to go in and make the arrest. It’s basically entrapment, but with sufficient caution to keep it within the law.

It’s surprising — though of course shouldn’t be, at a time when conservative legislators in the U.S. and many other countries are pushing to roll back LGBTQ rights — that such underhanded tactics to nab gay men were still in use as recently as 1996 — and possibly still are in some places. The undercover work depicted in Plainclothes seems not so different from the homophobic witch-hunts of more than half a century ago.

One of the most famous cases was the arrest in 1953 of distinguished actor John Gielgud — normally discreet about his sexual encounters — for what the Brits quaintly call “cottaging,” just months after he was awarded a knighthood.

Gielgud, who reportedly contemplated suicide and feared the incident would end his career, was charged with “persistently importuning men for immoral purposes” after showing interest in a plainclothes cop loitering at the urinal of a public toilet in London’s posh Chelsea district. He pleaded guilty, endured the tabloid shaming and continued a thriving career that included a best supporting actor Oscar in 1983 for his role as the dry-as-a-gin-martini butler to Dudley Moore’s drunken billionaire in Arthur.

Others were less fortunate. Plainclothes points up the preponderance of married men with families being arrested, pleading guilty to avoid the humiliation of going to court. Awareness that what he’s doing is likely ruining lives is a part of the internal conflict eating away at Blyth’s Lucas, conveyed by the actor with enervating tension and a habit of scratching his palms when he’s nervous.

The public men’s room as a gay cruising beat has been depicted on screen in many ways — as a frisky playground in German director Frank Ripploh’s landmark semi-autobiographical queer cult classic Taxi zum Klo; or as a swift path to prison in Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom, starring Franz Rogowski as a repeat offender, penalized under a law strictly enforced during the Nazi regime’s pink-triangle campaign, which remained on the books until the late 1960s.

It has also served as a hilariously cheeky FU in George Michael’s delightful music video for “Outside,” the single he released in 1998 following his arrest for “engaging in a lewd act” in the public restroom of a Beverly Hills park.

The extended “Outside” video opens with a mock-Swedish heterosexual porn film, then segues, via a snippet of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to present-day Hollywood, depicting steamy hook-ups — both gay and straight — and arrests. The most mischievous part is a public toilet that transforms into a glittering disco, where Michael leads an exuberant dance routine wearing a police uniform, singing lyrics like, “I’d service the community, but I already have.” It ends with a pair of male cops getting into a heated lip-lock after making arrests, before panning to a rooftop “Jesus Saves” neon.

That level of law enforcement hypocrisy is not Lucas’ issue in Plainclothes, given that repression has kept him in deep denial. A cop, like his grandfather, from a blue-collar family, he has confessed his attraction to men only to his kind-hearted girlfriend Emily (Amy Forsyth), choosing to end the relationship. With his unseen father, Gus, bed-ridden and dying, Lucas believes he should protect his mother, Marie (Maria Dizzia), by maintaining his silence.

Emmi effectively shakes up the chronology by interweaving scenes from a family New Years gathering, during which he becomes paranoid that his secret is out to his douchey Uncle Paul (Gabe Fazio), who habitually leeches off his sister Marie.

But the main action dates back months to Lucas’ increasing discomfort in his job, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the division lieutenant (John Bedford Lloyd) or the sergeant running the operation (Christian Cooke), both of them raging homophobes. They later switch things up by making good-looking rookie cop Jeff (Darius Fraser) the lure, figuring that a new face will get more arrest traction, and moving Lucas into wingman position. Emmi and DP Ethan Palmer dial up the homoerotic charge in the cops’ workout sessions, with Lucas’ glances making him risk exposure.

The spiral that pushes Lucas over the edge starts before that, when he gets a seductive look at the mall from a handsome older man (Russell Tovey, going full daddy with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses), who in an amusing touch enters the men’s room whistling the jaunty tune of “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin’ Along.”

Lucas follows the stranger and breaks the rules by stepping into the stall with him. But just as the older man is attempting to help the cop relax, he bolts, signaling to his colleague on the force that it’s a no-arrest situation. As he’s leaving the mall, the stranger hands Lucas a slip of paper with a phone number.

After a few weeks’ hesitation, they connect. The older man — who reveals that his name is Andrew, he’s a married family man and he works in administration in some unnamed field — suggests they meet at a movie palace that shows classics (Syracuse’s opulent Landmark Theatre). Lucas, who tells Andrew his name is Gus, which will come back to haunt him, is still too nervous to do much, but they get sufficiently intimate to feel the spark between them.

The following week, Andrew arranges to meet at a forest hiking trail leading to a greenhouse he knows will be empty. The resulting scene is a gorgeous reprieve of tenderness, freedom and discovery, as Lucas experiences the joy of being with another gay man for the first time. Andrew explains that he doesn’t generally see guys a second time, making it clear to Lucas that there will be no follow-up. But that doesn’t preclude some (smokin’ hawt) sex in Andrew’s car.   

Lucas can think of nothing else in the weeks that follow, a torture that will be familiar to anyone who recalls their first infatuation. Having taken down Andrew’s license plate number, he runs it through the system at work to trace him, refusing to believe that their sexual encounter won’t evolve into love. It does not go well, bringing major revelations and causing Lucas to act rashly but perhaps pushing him toward fuller self-knowledge.

Emmi shows his insecurity as a first-time director by not trusting the amply gripping story to work without lots of tricks. The use of video makes sense when it’s surveillance footage shot by cops from behind a one-way mirror in the mall men’s room, or when it’s home movies from Lucas’ childhood.

Clearly the jittery textures, jumpy editing and disorienting sound are intended to echo Lucas’ anxiety. But it starts to seem random and heavy-handed, making you wish the director would just stay focused on his terrific actors as their characters bounce around between desire and melancholy, desperation and fear. There’s only so many shots we need of tacky ceiling panels and harsh lighting to grasp the underlying sadness of men seeking connection in the least romantic of places.

That said, Plainclothes is unquestionably a movie that comes from a place of empathy for the constraints queer men had to work around in the pre-Grindr era, and in many cases no doubt still do. It’s a moving story told with sensitivity and beautifully acted by the two leads.