Touches You

Let's be realistic.

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

When movie makers produce stories like this - with a claim to be based on a true story, they should also be made to tell us: 'With lashings of added fiction'. This highly unpleasant, nasty work seems to be made by and for the transgender set and tends to manipulate facts for its own outcome (as they often do). The audience is not told anything about the main female character, Teena, before she decided to dress up as a boy, to now become Brandon. We first see her being groomed for her boys-night-out by another male friend - who, very clearly sees the danger ahead and warns her not to indulge in this foolishness. But, our girl, who feels like a boy, goes headlong into her own folly to test the ground - taking herself off to the rough spots looking for 'fun' This is a bad move, indeed a deadly move - not just for her but everyone that she selfishly attempts to 'fool'. For the genuine transgender person, there are many things that need to be done before diving into these situations! This rather impish looking kid would have a difficult time convincing another girl she was a boy, let alone the foul-mouthed moronic pub crowd she pushes her way into. These druggie-drunks, have little better to do for kicks than ride in the open backs of utilities, hanging onto ropes while doing high-speed wheelies. This mob invite her for some dangerous rough-ridin'-tough- guy fun. So, what would we expect our nice 'sensitive' kid to do?... why, gung-ho jump at the idea of course! Excited at the idea of getting it off with some chicks - she invites herself to join this nice, bored-witless boozy group. Out of these, she/he picks another blokes tag-a-long-girlfriend, creating tragedy for all. The brutal violence is over the top with a repugnant rape that goes on for far too long (as does everything in this sensationalized exploitation flick). Hillary Swank is out to get her Academy Award as she throws herself at the mercy of the writers and director – who pull out all stops in perverse Hollywood fashion. Court cases challenging the movie makers with falsified facts ensured but, a gullible public paid to see this grotesque, Sundance creation and some even praised it – more's the pity.

This is a disgusting mess of a film about repulsive people. It's a badly-acted film about underclass, violent, reckless idiots.It's a disgrace that Hilary Swank won the Academy Award for Best Actress, which should have gone to Julianne Moore for her brilliant role in The End of the Affair.

Powerful and moving film, but not without flaws. Hilary Swank gives the best performance she's ever given here. She does a great job at making you care about this tortured character. I'd say her performance is the highlight of the film. Everyone else does a pretty nice job as well. The people playing the evil murderers did their job of making me hate them and the other side characters did their jobs fine. The film tells the story of real life teenager Brandon Teena who was murdered for being transgender, and for the most part, the film tells this story fairly well. Only problem though is it tends to ignore the more flawed aspects of the character. The real life person had quite a criminal record, and while they do mention this several times in the movie, I never felt they truly explored that side of the character. The film instead decided to focus more on making the audience care about the main character, which is fine, I just would have liked both aspects of the character to have been touched on with equal amounts. In the end, it's still a pretty great film. The film makes you care and the more uncomfortable scenes don't feel excessive and unnecessary. Go see it.

Boys Don't Cry is a brutal, hard hitting drama about the tragic story of Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), a young woman with gender identity disorder and aims to live her life as a man. With a history of juvenile delinquency and social rejection from a homophobic, ill-informed community Brandon finds acceptance in Fall City, Nebraska, finding friends with a group and even love with Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny). But when Brandon's secret is discovery it leads to rejection, violence, rape and murder.Boys Don't Cry is an extremely well acted, well directed film, particularly from Swank and Sevigny who had very tough roles. Director Kimberly Peirce gives Boys Don't Cry a very tight, claustrophobic feel with her close direction in small settings and she does not shy away with the brutality when showing the violence and the horrific rape scene.Boys Don't Cry is a very raw, powerful film and a fine example of American independent filmmaking as we get a film about acceptance, love and prejudice.