Plainclothes (2025) [Movie Review]: A Tender, Uneasy ’90s Romance That Doubles as a Moral Study

Carmen Emmi’s Plainclothes is a moody, ’90s-set romantic thriller about Lucas (Tom Blyth), a closeted cop assigned to sting men cruising public restrooms — and the moral unraveling that follows when he becomes personally entangled with one of his targets, Andrew (Russell Tovey). What begins as routine surveillance becomes an intimate, risky obsession that forces Lucas to confront the laws he enforces and the life he hides.

Direction & Writing

Writer-director Carmen Emmi shows notable assurance in reconstructing a pre-app era of gay cruising. The screenplay balances procedural elements with interior conflict, and Emmi’s use of archival textures (VHS-style inserts and surveillance framing) smartly creates a subjective, fragmented point of view. At times, the stylistic flourishes feel like heavy-handed attempts to disorient us, but they largely serve the film’s psychological aims.

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Performances

Tom Blyth anchors the film with a quietly volatile turn: his Lucas is equal parts repressed, curious, and dangerously impulsive. Russell Tovey brings a lived-in charisma to Andrew, making him sympathetic without reducing him to a plot device. Maria Dizzia offers a grounded counterpoint as Lucas’s mother, heightening the family pressures that keep Lucas isolated. Supporting players add texture, and the chemistry between Blyth and Tovey carries much of the movie’s emotional weight.

Themes & Style

Plainclothes is at its strongest when it observes ritual — the furtive glances, coded gestures, and the geography of rendezvous — and when it interrogates entrapment as both a policing tactic and an emotional state. The film thoughtfully stages the clash between public duty and private desire, using mirrors, one-way glass, and hidden cameras to literalize surveillance of the self. Emmi’s period detail and quiet production design evoke the era’s risk-and-longing with specificity.

Shortcomings

The film’s momentum is occasionally undercut by plot conveniences and a few narrative stretches that demand suspension of disbelief. The editing sometimes leans into jittery collage, where restraint might have amplified impact. Still, these flaws don’t entirely derail an otherwise compelling portrait of identity under pressure.

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Verdict & Rating

Plainclothes is a provocative, well-acted debut that explores desire, shame, and the ethics of policing with sensitivity. It isn’t flawless, but Carmen Emmi’s confident vision and two strong lead performances make this a memorable and affecting psychodrama.

Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10