It's hard not to come back at posters who have given this film such a poor rating when this is clearly exceptional movie making. One wonders too whether some viewers were voting their personal discomfort with the protagonist's problems with sexual identity, rather than assessing a movie. Hilary Swank's is a truly exceptional performance: gut-wrenchingly real, winning you over with her stunning ability to create a living character that is so real one forgets that one is watching fiction. The fiction is merely apparent in this case. The writing and direction too is superlative. There are only 2 problems with Boys Don't Cry: 1) it is so convincing that it is truly upsetting to watch. 2) it's hard for Swank to go anywhere other than down in terms of performance. Having watched her last night in the also excellent Million Dollar Baby, attempting to assess her work for me is very difficult; one can't help comparing her performance to BDC and finding yourself thinking that she hasn't had to produce that much out of her locker. The fault is mine, I'm sure, not Swank's. In short, though, Boys Don't Cry, a film that got almost no release in the UK, is one of the most under-known and underrated movie in recent times.
CT
CT