As this year’s Sundance films continue to trickle out, one that I think is flying under the radar is Carmen Emmi’s Plainclothes. Magnolia Pictures picked up the rights to this steamy ’90s-set thriller starring Tom Blyth as an undercover Syracuse cop whose task is luring in and arresting gay men. Everything changes for him when he begins falling in love with a target, played by Russell Tovey.
The reason I say Plainclothes is being overlooked is that it won Sundance’s Special Jury Award for its impressive ensemble cast, which includes Amy Forsyth, Christian Cooke, Maria Dizzia, and Gabe Fazio.
I was more appreciative of the film than I was a champion for it. Blyth is far better in this than he was The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, but I didn’t like the film’s dated stereotypes and slow pacing.
That said, I feel there’s an audience out there for Plainclothes. Look for it to hit theaters on September 19th.
SYNOPSIS: “Set in 1990s Syracuse and featuring breakout performances from stars Tom Blyth (HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES) and Russell Tovey (LOOKING), director Carmen Emmi’s Sundance award-winning thriller follows a promising undercover officer (Blyth) assigned to lure and arrest gay men who defies orders when he falls in love with a target (Tovey). At his mother’s New Year’s Eve party Lucas, a young police officer, loses a letter no one was ever meant to read. Amid the backdrop of the suffocating family party, the search for the letter unlocks memories of a past he’s tried to forget: months earlier, while working undercover in a mall bathroom, Lucas arrested men by seducing them. But when he encounters Andrew, everything changes. What begins as another setup becomes something far more electric and intimate. As their secret connection deepens and police pressure to deliver arrests intensifies, Lucas finds himself torn between duty and desire. With time running out and his past closing in, PLAINCLOTHES builds toward a New Year’s Eve reckoning where everything he’s buried threatens to erupt.”
