Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry

Even if it were nothing else, Boys Don't is evidence that Hilary Swank is one of the best actresses in Hollywood.

Because the film was based on a fairly well known true story, there may be inherent SPOILERS ahead.

 

Let's face it, Hilary Swank is not exactly a conventional beauty. In fact she looks like a hard woman that could kick your ass. Which is why she was cast as The Next Karate Kid, and the Million Dollar Baby, and more recently as a frontierswoman in The Homesman. 

But she also showed incredible vulnerability in all those roles as well. And it's her ability to believably pull off tough and vulnerable that makes Boys Don't Cry perhaps her greatest role.

Based on the true story of trans man Brandon Teena who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, NE in the early 1990s. But the film is so much more than a true crime dramatization. As depicted in the film, Brandon was a young man still transitioning not only in gender, but from boy to man. The rural plains States were also a place of transition in the early 90s with dwindling populations, foreclosed farms and lingering recession, as the information age started to drive economics in other parts of the country.

Even before the recession of the early 1990s, though, Nebraska was 95% white, 90% Christian, and provincialism was a way of life. Anyone who dares to dream of anything outside Nebraska is mocked and ridiculed, even by the "broad minded" Lincoln natives like Brandon's ousin Lonny.

The term "toxic masculinity" has been bandied about intellectual circles frequently lately for things like reluctance to seek cancer screenings, but to truly understand the meaning one needs to consider a place like southern Nebraska in the early 90s, and that's a place Director Kimberly Pierce wasn't afraid to shine a light on, and thanks to the acting chops of Hilary Swank, it's a harrowing experience, but one worth visiting, especially given the other strong performance of Chloe Sevigny as Lana, the one ray of hope.