Product Details

• Actors: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III, Alicia Goranson
• Directors: Kimberly Peirce
• Writers: Kimberly Peirce, Andy Bienen
• Producers: Bradford Simpson, Caroline Kaplan, Christine Vachon, Eva Kolodner, Jeff Sharp
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
• VHS Release Date: September 5, 2000
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (284 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00003CWN2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,545 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

When Brandon Teena, a young man with an infectious, aw-shucks grin and an angelic face that's all angles, wanders into Falls City, Nebraska, he takes to the town like it's a second skin. In little time he's fallen in with a gang of goofy if temperamental redneck boys, found himself a girlfriend, and befriended enough people to form something of a small family. In fact, it's the best time Brandon's ever had. However, there are shadows looming over Brandon's life: a court date for grand theft auto, a checkered criminal record, and a seemingly innocuous speeding ticket that could prove to be his undoing. Why? Because as it turns out, Brandon Teena is actually Teena Brandon, a woman masquerading as a man.

This fascinating story was based on real-life events (as documented in The Brandon Teena Story) that occurred in 1993 and ended in tragedy: Brandon's rape and murder by two of his supposed friends. Despite this horrible outcome, however, in the hands of director Kimberly Peirce (who cowrote the unfettered screenplay with Andy Bienen), Brandon's story becomes not oppressive or preachy, but rather oddly and touchingly transcendent, anchored by Hilary Swank's phenomenal, unsentimental performance. Swank inhabits Brandon's contradictions and passions with a natural vitality most actresses would refuse to give themselves over to. Brandon's deception is doomed from the start, but Swank's enthusiasm is infectious, and when Brandon starts romancing the sloe-eyed Lana (a pitch-perfect Chloë Sevigny), he finds a soul mate who wants to transcend boundaries and fated identities as much as he does. The last part of the film, when Brandon's true identity is discovered, is truly painful to watch, but in between the agony there are touching moments of sweetness between Brandon and Lana, who wrestles with the truth of who Brandon actually is. You'll come away from Boys Don't Cry with affection and respect for Brandon, not pity. --Mark Englehart

From The New Yorker

A delicately conceived but fearless movie. In small-town Nebraska, a young woman named Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank) clips her hair into a butch cut, flattens her breasts, puts on boys' clothes and a boy's swagger, and passes in the world as Brandon Teena, handsome young dude. What she feels is pure exhilaration, the excitement of leaving her past behind and becoming a lover; what we feel is dismay and fear. Brandon falls in with a group of derelict, white-trash kids and attracts the languid beauty Lana (Chloë Sevigny), who allows herself to think that Brandon is a man-with inevitably disastrous results. The movie is a fine, terrifying tragic poem that is also, at times, subversively funny: the women who like Brandon seem to want the feminine as well as the masculine in a lover. Director Kimberly Peirce, who wrote the screenplay with Andy Bienen, embraces a full-bodied lyrical realism in which nothing is exaggerated but nothing is avoided, either. With Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III as two mangy ex-cons, and Jeannetta Arnette as Lana's boozing mom, who desperately hopes that everything will come out all right. Based on actual events, which were the subject last year of a documentary called "The Brandon Teena Story." -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes they do, October 11, 2004

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Boys Don't Cry [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie really made me think about sexual differences and what it means to have a sex change or to want one, or to be trapped in a gender you don't want. It was very effective to have us see Hilary Swank (who plays Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon) with short hair and male facial expressions and gestures without giving us a glimpse of her as Teena. (Actually we did get a brief glimpse in a photo.) Swank looks like a boy, acts like a boy, in fact works hard to be a boy; indeed that is (sadly) part of what this movie is about, what it means to be a boy in middle America as opposed to being a girl. And then when we have the scene with the tampons and the breast wrapping and we see her legs, the effect is startling, an effect possibly lost on those who knew that the person playing Brandon was a woman. It was when I saw her legs and could tell at a glance that she was a woman with a woman's legs that I realized just how subtle, but unmistakable are the anatomical sexual differences, and how convincing Swank's portrayal was.

I was reminded as I watched this of being a young person, of being a teenager and going through all the rituals and rites, unspoken, unplanned, without social sanction, that we all go through to prove our identity, because that is what Brandon was so eager to do, to prove his identity as a boy. I thought, ah such an advantage he has with the girls because he knows what they like and what they want. He can be smooth, and how pretty he looks. It was strange. I actually knew some guys in my youth who had such talent, and the girls did love them.

The direction by Kimberly Peirce is nicely paced and the forebodings of horror to come are sprinkled lightly throughout so that we don't really think about the resolution perhaps until the campfire scene in which John Lotter shows his self-inflicted scars and tosses the knife to Brandon. Then we know for sure that something bad is going to happen.

Hilary Swank is very convincing. Her performance is stunning, and she deserved the Academy Award she won for Best Actress. She is the type of tomboy/girl so beloved of the French cinema, tomboyish, but obvious a girl like, for example, Zouzou as seen in Chloe in the Afternoon (1972) or Elodie Bouchez in the The Dreamlife of Angels (1998), or many others. Indeed, one is even reminded of Juliette Binoche, who of course can play anything, or going way back, Leslie Caron in Gigi (1958). Chloe Signvey, who plays Lana Tisdel, the girl Brandon loves, whom I first saw in Palmetto (1998), where she stole a scene or two from Woody Harrelson and Elisabeth Shue, really comes off ironically as butch to Swank, yet manages a sexy, blue collar girl next door femininity. She also does a great job. Peter Sarsgaard is perfect as John Lotter, trailer trash car thief and homophobic redneck degenerate.

Very disturbing is the ending. If you know the story, you know the ending. Just how true this was to the real life story it is based on is really irrelevant. I knew nothing about the story, but I know that film makers always take license to tell it the way they think it will play best, and so it's best to just experience the film as the film, independent of the real story, which, like all real stories, can never be totally told.

Obviously this is not for the kiddies and comes as close to an "X" rating as any "R" movie you'll ever see. It will
make most viewers uncomfortable, but it is the kind of story that needs to be told.

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Masquerading and Not about sexual orientation, March 4, 2000

By 

Rainn MacPhail (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boys Don't Cry [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is an excellent film, however the subject is heart wrenching. The film isn't about a girl masquerading as a man or about a confused lesbian. These terms have unfortunately been equated with the film and are inaccurate. Brandon was an FTM, a transgendered person/transexual who was pre-op. The film does deal with Brandon's affirmation of his (yes--editors-HIS)true SELF (read Jung). Chloe Sevigny portrays a young woman who is able to see beyond the physical and into Brandon's true SELF. Unfortuately, 2 disturbed men, who have many issues in themselves, in their limited vision and supposed masculinity are challenged by Brandon's transgenderness. They project their own insecurities out on Brandon--brutally raping and murdering Brandon, a young mother, and an African American (not shown in the film). Warning: this film is emotionally upsetting and demonstrates the issue of violence on many levels--all folks can relate. In many respects, this film ranks on the levels of Schlinder's List and Platoon. Please make sure you see the film with someone so you can talk afterwords. Trust me, I conducted a panel after a showing of the film for an audience of 40-50 individuals. Let the pain in and feel it. It's the only way you can truly understand the film.

It's too bad that Kimberly Peirce was not nominated for an Academy Award for her direction. The film is EXCELLENT!

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous, Intense, Devastating, March 28, 2000

By 

Michael Crowley (Arizona) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Boys Don't Cry [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Congratulations to the filmmakers and financiers of this bold film, and also to the Academy for giving it prominence.

"Boys Don't Cry" succeeds as a portrait not only of a sexual identity crisis but simply as a portrait of one woman's compassion (Chloe Sevigny) for another human being--it succeeds where "My Own Private Idaho" failed because "Boys" is an aesthetically cohesive work of art. Director Kimberly Pierce is astonishly gifted. Her attention to detail, composition, and her ability to use locations and static objects as metaphors for what is transpiring in the minds and lives her her characters is remarkable. The editing is also another noteworthy feature (although the use of flashbacks in Act III is unnecessary and detracts from one of the film's most powerful scenes).

Although Hilary Swank is undeniably amazing, it is the character played by Chloe Sevingny that gives this film its emotional resonance. Her role is not a supporting role but a lead role--in fact she is technically the protagonist (undergoes classic character change)and has nearly as much screen time as Swank. Sevingny's performance is absolutely brilliant.

One warning: I walked into this film unaware of how disturbing it would be and was blindsided. This is a gritty, no holds barred film about a sensitive subject.

Although I doubt this was Kimberly Pierce's primary intent, the film also stands as a powerful argument in favor of hate crime legislation. There is an emotional plea for tolerance at the core of this movie, and people on the political fence may find that this film moves them in the direction of conceding that hate crimes comprise a separate category.