Everyone has a secret.
In 1990s New York, an undercover police officer receives an assignment to lure and arrest gay men. However, he's surprised to discover a scintillating connection with one of his targets. As their secret connection deepens and internal pressure to deliver arrests intensifies, he finds himself torn between duty and desire.
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Character
Grave, intimate, character-led and overwhelming.
- gravecomic
- intimateepic
- character-ledplot-driven
- cooloverwhelming
- rawmeticulous
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“Is Tom Blyth the best thing in Plainclothes?”
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“Should they have ended up together?”
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“Does it glamorize what it means to condemn?”
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A yes-or-no question, answered from what people wrote here, on TMDB and on Wikipedia. Never made up.
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Reviews on TMDB
Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Tastebuds's numbers.
- tmdb35409584on TMDB · Jan 20267/10
The opening of this film, of a young man cruising in a mall, quickly establishes the setting and decade and set me on edge whether or not I thought this film was going to "do something." The movie is shot on film and in a 4:3 ratio, interspersed with footage recorded on other kinds of film and cameras—the effect is disorienting. From the start, there is a sense of surveillance, communicated through both the main character's eyes—searching for marks, looking in mirrors, matching gazes—and that interspersed footage which *feels* like a recording in a way the "normal" footage of the film doesn't. This looking (between characters and the audience at other clips) quickly is shown to also be a fear of surveillance for the main character. The film is kind of a coming out film, so this surveilling and fear of surveillance has much to do with the main character both being found out and finding himself out. The intimacy in the scenes between Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey is pretty remarkable. There is an education in cruising here and a clear-sighted understanding of masculine intimacy in the 90s—in no way particularly *queer*, but just other. The relationship between the characters is marked
Read the whole review on TMDB - CinemaSerfon TMDB · Nov 20257/10
Following the murder of two young girls who refused to give their killer oral sex, the authorities decide that this is a reasonable excuse to clamp down on cottaging in the gents toilets of a mall. That’s where officer “Lucas” (Tom Blyth) is put to work. He’s the handsome lure to attract gentlemen into unzipping when they probably wished they hadn’t, before they are led away in handcuffs for prosecution. Then one shift, he encounters the slightly less obvious “Andrew” (Russell Tovey) who doesn’t fall for the trap, and who slightly enthrals the young man. Indeed as the story goes on we realise that “Lucas” has a secret of his own and that what he wants from “Andrew” might fly in the face of his professional obligations. Of course, in his way “Andrew” is no different from “Lucas”. A man living a life under wraps, with his own secrets to keep - so what chance anything might come of anything? I thought Blyth held this together well as he juggled his professional, family and “private” lives together, especially as the latter element sees him become ever so slightly obsessive. The denouement is messy, but it does tie the threads together after a fashion and along the way auteur Carmen Em
Read the whole review on TMDB - Brent Marchanton TMDB · Sep 2025
The LGBTQ+ community has made remarkable strides in terms of acceptance over the past five decades, a far cry from the conditions that were in place years ago. However, despite this progress, community members from various personal backgrounds and those working in certain professions have struggled with their comfort levels when it comes to being open about themselves. They have been unable or unwilling to step forward to profess their true natures to a world that has steadily become more understanding (even if there’s still work to be done in this area, as has become painfully apparent of late). Such are the conditions faced by Lucas (Tom Blyth), an undercover cop assigned to arrest (some would say entrap) gay men who cruise public spaces (particularly restrooms) looking for sex partners, ultimately nailing them on counts of indecent exposure. There’s one problem with that, though: Lucas wrestles with his own attraction to men, a leaning that has made doing his job more personally challenging. He also struggles to cope with the pressures of remaining closeted in his less-than-accepting family, particularly his hypercritical, homophobic uncle (Gabe Fazio). The ante gets upped on al
Read the whole review on TMDB
Cast
- Tom BlythLucas
- Russell ToveyAndrew
- Amy ForsythEmily
- Maria DizziaMarie
- Christian CookeRon
- Gabe FazioUncle Paul
- John Bedford LloydLt. Sollars
- Sam Asa BrownsteinChristian
- Darius FraserJeff
- Alessandra Ford BalazsJessie
Crew
- Carmen EmmiDirector
- Carmen EmmiWriter
- Ethan PalmerDirector of Photography
- Emily WellsOriginal Music Composer
- Erik Vogt-NilsenEditor
- Eric PodwallProducer
- Colby CoteProducer
- Arthur LandonProducer
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