PLAINCLOTHES - Mark Reviews Movies

Plainclothes, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 18, 2025

If Lucas (Tom Blyth) could just say it, the truth would free him from so much internal torment. What, though, would be the external ramifications of that truth? Plainclothes lives within that question for its protagonist, a secretly gay man living in the mid-1990s and working as an undercover cop whose job is to arrange the arrest of other men with the same secret.

Writer/director Carmen Emmi's debut feature portrays a constant sense of fear from the very start. It cuts between two different times in the young man's life. One is before and while he has his first romantic relationship with another man. The other is after that fact, and both periods are trying for him in distinct but similar ways. In the first one, Lucas is terrified of being caught and, perhaps, even more frightened by the prospect of losing this relationship. In the second, he fears being found out, while also grappling with what he has lost and doesn't seem capable of recovering, either with the man from before or with anyone else.

Blyth's performance takes us through all of this on an emotional level, and Emmi's filmmaking, which employs assorted aspect ratios and formats, attempts to put us inside Lucas's head. The result plays like a psychological thriller of paranoia, guilt, and shame, but it never loses focus on the causes and consequences of the anguish Lucas experiences moment to moment.

The split narrative is rather ingenious, actually. In the "after" section of the story, Lucas is with his family at his childhood home. This is one side of his life—the one in which he is dealing with his beloved father's recent death, his uncle Paul (Gabe Fazio) and the man's tough-guy attitude, and the worry that he will let down his mother Marie (Maria Dizzia), who is already in the midst of grief for her husband and still has to put up with her irritating brother. In his mind, Lucas' secret must remain, lest he risk breaking his mother's heart again.

Most of the story, though, follows Lucas at work and in the development of what turns out to be an unlikely romance. Lucas and the rest of his team's task is to go undercover at a local mall, try to find men looking for some sexual encounter in the public restroom, and convince their target to expose himself in the bathroom.

There is no real legal logic to this kind of sting, and indeed, the only rationale for it seems to be one born of the prejudice of the higher-ups in the police department. At one point, the team's boss (played by John Bedford Lloyd) shows Lucas and the other undercover cops some old filmed footage of a similar sting operation from decades ago, and in all practical ways, nothing has changed from then until film's now in the persecution of men based solely on their sexual orientation.

In other words, Lucas cannot be truthful in his personal life or his professional one, making his private life into an onslaught of anxiety and self-loathing. Emmi often uses a handheld video camera to present Lucas' point of view, and the imagery of those shots is doubly appropriate. Firstly, it's somewhat warped, compared to the more traditional filmic look of the shots surrounding it. Secondly, the shots themselves portray a heightened kind of reality, in which Lucas imagines people staring at him with quiet judgement on their faces or whispering to each other as if they know exactly what this man has been trying to hide for years.

When Andrew (Russell Tovey) arrives in the story, his appearance subtly signals something different. Andrew becomes a target of the sting, but Emmi stages the stranger's encounter with Lucas without seeing or acknowledging the other cops involved. This is only a moment between and for the two of them, and it's almost a surprise when Lucas' partner appears, looking for a sign to make an arrest but back off once Lucas gives that signal.

Lucas starts meeting up with Andrew, although he gives the man his father's name instead of his own. He is still scared and unsure and filled with doubt, but the two men talk about their lives, their shared worries, their families, and their hopes that maybe one day they won't have to hide this part of themselves. Lucas believes that last part. Andrew only sees it as a dream. The difference means everything as to what relationship means to each man at this particular moment in their lives, as well as why Lucas becomes obsesses, not necessarily with Andrew, but with the idea that the man represents.

The film is quite harrowing on a few levels, then. There is the practical side of Lucas trying to maintain his secret, even as his relationship with Andrew opens himself up to personal and professional jeopardy. One sequence is especially tense in that regard, as Lucas must find a way not to give himself away to his cop colleagues or to a familiar face at the mall. Back on the home front, there's a running bit of plotting about a letter Lucas has brought to his family's house, for whom it's meant and what it says, and what has happened to it after Lucas misplaces it.

Primarily, though, the film's impact is simply in watching Lucas evade and cover up this truth of himself for reasons that are all about other people's potential feelings and narrow-minded opinions. Plainclothes looks at this character and his torment, as well as the people and society that have forced that upon him, without blinking.

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