Brandon Teena / Teena Brandon, embodied magically by actress Hillary Swank,
meets her attackers and eventual rapists/murderers early in the film. She is “befriended”
by them as a male and carries her persona all the way into a love affair with one of these
“friend” ’s girlfriends. Brandon, living a lie, can’t seem to crawl away from the world he
has escaped to. He can’t cut loose of the family-like atmosphere created by his newfound
“friends”. When he realizes that he’s in over his head, the time is nigh and it is too late.
These are the pivotal scenes, the ones the movie makes us feel most painfully. When we
have realized and deduced that Brandon’s evasion of his “friends” is impossible, the
movie takes flight on an entirely different level. We are nearly transformed into Brandon,
nearly walking in his shoes and seeing before us no way out.

 An absolutely chilling film when it gets right down into it, 'Boys Don’t Cry' is
more than just a film warning us not to form an opinion if we
aren’t in possession of all the facts - it is a testament to a lost soul and a page marker in
American history. Sentenced this week was Aaron McKinney, the man who killed a
Denver area gay man by the name of Matthew Shepard. We can’t help but draw the
parallel. McKinney was given life imprisonment as were the killers of Brandon Teena.
The murder was brutal and was based on nothing more than a sheer revulsion at the sight
of something different, something the killers were not willing to try to understand. When
we discuss  cross gender politics in relation to their enemies, people who don’t
understand them, people belonging to hate groups or fools, so-called religious people,
hiding behind ambigious bible references; we should keep in mind that films like this and
stories like Matthew Shepard’s, are told for a reason. Watching 'Boys Don’t Cry', and I am
an open-minded person who doesn’t dislike any group for any reason, I couldn’t imagine
the pain a person must go through, the martyrdom they bring about and the ultimate
mourning loved ones must trudge through. It made me sick to my stomach imagining the
events, but seeing them on the screen made me more angry than anything else.

 Films like this one are so important and so absolutely winning at the same time.
I must smile to see how the critical acclaim has caught on here. I am so absolutely in awe of the illogic of people who hate one another based on sexual preference, race, etc. I can’t stress enough how much this film vindicates the logic of tolerant people.

 The acting here is absolutely smashing. Hillary Swank ('The Next Karate Kid')
works so well as both sexes, she’s sure to warrant a much-deserved award somewhere
(though acting in a film this potent and significant is probably it’s own reward). I loved
the charming way she postured her lips, the dazzling blue eyes and the raw kindness of
the south, mixed around inside her hypodermic needle of a soul, injecting amiability into
everyone she comes in contact with. Chloe Sevigny, Brandon’s love interest, is so
wonderful, as usual. The duality of her role is met with such vigor and warmth, she can
be a wiseass and a patient lover simultaneously. Disappearing into themeselves, we see
Peter Sarsgaard and Brandon Sexton, III ('Welcome to the Dollhouse', 'Hurricane Streets')
dripping the two-faced mechanism like it was hydrochloric acid, burning our retinas with
disbelief at both their sincerity and their violence, all at once. Particularly Sarsgaard, but
to a degree, Sexton (who’s never played a role this wicked), live in the infamy of the
film’s world as proof of the desperation and paranoia that our penal system is breeding.
Both characters spent a sufficient time in jail as the film begins and as it continues, it
becomes apparent that their prison time created far worse monsters of Tom and John than
they were when they entered the correctional gates. When the epilogue tells us they are
serving life sentences, we cannot help but wonder what the chemistry of the whole
situation is, who’s to blame and where the world is headed when situations like these
exist. What good are their lives in jail? What good is jail in their lives? Opposite pole :
What good is the death penalty? How do we learn from murder by murdering? The
swirling enigma never ceases to amaze me.

 Finally, 'Boys Don’t Cry' stuck with me. As you probably expected, I was unable to
shake this vision of midwestern rage and confusion. The haunting images, the whole
structure of a tired and emptiness inside the hearts of seemingly normal people and the
beauty and tremendous spirit of Brandon all tagged along as baggage long after I left the
theater. The film, doing it’s job, effectively, left me angry and serene at the same time.