An exceptionally powerful, beautifully acted film containing a stunning reminder to us of how hellish life can be in an intolerant society where man finds it all too convenient to sit in judgment of another. The movie is all the more searing in its impact as its based on cold hard facts. Brandon Teena, on whom the film is based, was a real person whose frail life was brutally snatched away by the regressive forces of intolerance and it didn't happen in prehistoric current Afghanistan but in America as recently as the mid 90's.

Teena was a complete tomboy of a girl living in Trashville (Nebraska) USA with a burning desire to be a boy, not a girl. In the opening credit sequence we are shown Teena transforming into Brandon by cropping her hair and stuffing a sock down her trousers. She tries her luck at the local fleapit bar but ends up fleeing as the façade is discovered. Teena is thus on the LAM - running from her growing record as a petty criminal as well as the suffocating web of intolerance that is determined to view her as a freak and a sickness. In one way she is also on the run from a town that has now discovered that she is not indeed a man, but a girl pretending to be a man, running from her female identity.

After a brawl in another hell hole of a bar somewhere in the blighted industrial wasteland of America, Brandon hooks up with a group of partying white trash where "his" façade seems to hold up and people don't have any idea of his "other", previous life. Life in the guise of Brandon is better than ever and the bliss is complete when he falls in love with Lana, a girl with a dead end job in a dead end town with a dead end life. As their relationship blossoms Lana experiences through Brandon's sensitivity a warmth and passion that has her glowing with a new found desire for life. Lana begins to dare to dream of a life away from the dregs that she finds herself in at Falls City, her hometown. Brandon holds the key to a better life for her yet she senses that there is something different about him, but so what.

The film gains suspense and tension as the audience waits for the inevitable to happen. The question is , when will Brandon's façade be discovered and how will the forces of intolerance react to the discovery that Brandon has been living a lie. The film is unflinching, brutally honest and ultimately very hard hitting. Brandon's world is swallowed up by despair as gradually the secret is revealed and her "identity" discovered through a horrifying and brutally harrowing scene where the two goons Brandon had befriended decide to make a physical inspection of their own.

Boys Don't Cry makes compelling viewing but it is not a pretty sight. The backdrop is America at its lowest ebb. A blitzed, run down, punch drunk town with a dazed community rife with poverty and crime, chaos and disorder. Far worse than this is the level of intolerance and blind hatred that pervades the society. A beautiful, radiant, if clearly imperfect flower blossoms in the form of Brandon Teena, but it is soon horribly suffocated by the winds of intolerance that blow through this wretched community.

There is no reason for room for beauty, vitality, individuality or indeed for love int his atmosphere and like Romeo and Juliet were hounded to their demise, it is a similar tragic fate that awaits our doomed couple. Hilary Swank has given a phenomenal performance as Brandon Teena. She is nothing less that sensational. Her acting during and following the tortuous rape scene is truly fantastic and she thoroughly deserved her Oscar ahead of the brilliant Benning from American Beauty. This is a very important breakthrough movie which needs to be seen especially in societies where the glorious concept of tolerance - the essence of any civilized society - has been almost completely forgotten and replaced with iron like rigidity, dogma, narrow-mindedness and hatred. Boys Don't Cry is essential viewing.