Powerful and moving film, but not without flaws. Hilary Swank gives the best performance she's ever given here. She does a great job at making you care about this tortured character. I'd say her performance is the highlight of the film. Everyone else does a pretty nice job as well. The people playing the evil murderers did their job of making me hate them and the other side characters did their jobs fine. The film tells the story of real life teenager Brandon Teena who was murdered for being transgender, and for the most part, the film tells this story fairly well. Only problem though is it tends to ignore the more flawed aspects of the character. The real life person had quite a criminal record, and while they do mention this several times in the movie, I never felt they truly explored that side of the character. The film instead decided to focus more on making the audience care about the main character, which is fine, I just would have liked both aspects of the character to have been touched on with equal amounts. In the end, it's still a pretty great film. The film makes you care and the more uncomfortable scenes don't feel excessive and unnecessary. Go see it.
Review of Boys Don't Cry
