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Boys Don't Cry (1999)
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:19
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.9/10
Consensus: Hilary Swank's acclaimed performance pays fitting tribute to the tragic life of Brandon Teena.
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis:
From the middle of America emerged an extraordinary double life, a complicated love story and a crime that would shatter the heartland.
In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) was...
From the middle of America emerged an extraordinary double life, a complicated love story and a crime that would shatter the heartland.
In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) was a newcomer with a future who had the small rural community enchanted. Women adored him and almost everyone who met this charismatic stranger was drawn to his charming innocence. But, Falls City's hottest date and truest friend had one secret: he wasn't the person people thought he was.
Back home in Lincoln just seventy-five miles away, Brandon Teena was a different person caught up in a personal crisis that had haunted him his entire life.
Like many young people, he made costly mistakes and when he inadvertently trespassed between his new love Lana (Chloe Sevigny) and her reckless friend John (Peter Sarsgaard), the mystery unraveled into violence.
In a single, short life Brandon Teena was at once a dashing lover and a trapped outsider, both an impoverished nobody and a flamboyant dreamer, a daring thief and the tragic victim of an unjust crime.
Boys Don't Cry explores the contradictions of American youth and identity through the true life and death of Brandon Teena. What emerges from a dust-cloud of mayhem, desire and murder is the story of a young American drifter searching for love, a sense of self and a place to call home.
Starring: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton
Starring: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton, Alison Folland, Alicia Goranson, Matt McGrath, Lou Perryman, Rob Campbell, Jeannetta Arnette
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Screenwriter: Kimberly Peirce, Andy Bienen
Producer: Christine Vachon, John Hart, Eva Kolodner, Jeff Sharp, Pamela Koffler
Composer: Nathan Larson
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Reviews for Boys Don't Cry
[Hilary Swank] has come out of nowhere to deliver one of the year's finest pieces of acting.
With its constant juxtaposition of blazing nighttime highwayscapes and the flat Nebraska skyline, Boys Don't Cry manages to perfectly evoke both a life spent in aimless forward motion and the stifling boredom Brandon was so desperate to escape.
Boys Don't Cry not only revisits the crime, but convinces us we're being taken inside it.
Director Pierce and Bienen and the expert cast engage us in the actuality of these rootless, hopeless, stoned-out lives without sentimentalizing or romanticizing them.
A stirring, emotionally true testament to foolish bravery as well as shameful evidence of the severity with which it is so often punished.
The film is framed, too unquestioningly, as a transgender Rebel Without a Cause, with Brandon the martyred innocent who dies for her infatuations.
The movie lets down the material. It's too cool: all attitude, no sizzle--horror under glass.
Latest News for Boys Don't Cry
September 08, 2006:
Olyphant and the "Third Rock" Kid Join Phillippe In "Stop Loss"
Director Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry") has a few more guys on her roster for the soldier drama "Stop Loss," also starring Ryan Phillippe. Thesps... More...
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