‘Plainclothes’ Review: A Closeted Cop Is Tempted by the Gay Men He’s Tailing in Steamy ’90s-Set Psychodrama
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic These days, gay men can arrange sex by a smartphone app as easily as ordering a pizza. But back in the ’90s, when “Plainclothes” takes place, such trysts not only had to be coordinated in person, but could be punished by arrest.
Audiences of a certain age and demographic almost certainly remember the risk and fear (not to mention the illicit excitement) back then, when undercover police monitored public “tearooms” for lewd behavior.
In writer-director Carmen Emmi’s “we’ve come a long way, baby” debut, the cops take it one step further, luring homosexuals into exposing themselves.
But what if the officer in question was closeted and one of these strangers slipped him his phone number? That’s the intriguing — if credulity-stretching — premise of “Plainclothes,” which casts Tom Blyth (the outlaw star of Epix’s “Billy the Kid”) as Lucas, a second-generation cop with all kinds of identity issues.
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