Looking back at The Crying Game after a quarter of a century from its cinema release, it still is an intriguing film. It also looks increasingly quaint because within two years of its release there was a rapprochement between the IRA and the British government that would eventually lead to the peace process.Jody (Forest Whitaker) is a British soldier in Northern Ireland who is befriended by Jude (Miranda Richardson) who is an IRA agent. She plans to lure him into a honey trap where he is kidnapped.Jody angry and shocked befriends Fergus (Stephen Rea) one of his kidnappers. They tell stories to each other, Jody talks of his passion for cricket and his girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson.) Jody asks Fergus to look up Dil after he is dead.When the times comes Fergus reluctantly takes up the task to shoot him but Jody runs away into the woods and is run over by an army van that was on its way to rescue him and engages in battle with some of the kidnappers.Fergus escapes and arrives to London, gets a job in a building site and finds Dil who works as an hairdresser and performs at a nearby pub. They initially communicate via Col the barman (Jim Broadbent.)Dil is being harassed by a bully called Dave and it is not long before Fergus's IRA comrades arrive. They are angry at him for escaping in the aftermath of the botched hit on Jody. Yet Fergus and Dil still manage to fall in love through all the obstacles that arise.The film has an opening of a kidnap thriller with angry performances from Miranda Richardson and Adrian Dunbar as the IRA operatives. It then deviates to another kind of story, one involving a blossoming romance between essentially two outsiders, damaged in their own ways. Dil grieving over her boyfriend who has been killed but not knowing of Fergus's involvement in it.There are now two Oscar winners in this film. Forest Whitaker's cockney accent makes Dick van Dyke's turn in Mary Poppins into a masterclass of accents. The more subtle performance is from Jim Broadbent as the knowing barman.There is a precocious, vulnerable performance from Jaye Davidson whose hands betray a secret which Fergus failed to pick up on. The film has characters that lacked depth and a third act which was clunky and disappointing as Fergus is lured to another job by his so called IRA friends.

A great movie and very emotional. I heard about it. Back in 1992. And I finally saw it. It's a great movie with great twists and turns.

It's really a bit of an eye-opener to watch Crying Game in today's society if you can put yourself back to remember how things were in 1992. It feels like a completely different era of an even longer time removed since then. So much has changed, yet some things still remain constant. One of the most glaring reminders of the day: the murder of U.S. sailor Allen Schindler in 1992, and the military's alleged attempt for a cover-up afterward.My own perceptions and ideals have changed since I saw this at Baltimore's Charles Theatre. It's almost creepy to see how I've changed regarding certain... It's almost impossible to express without spoiling the film if I could ever say what I would like. Let me say however, that I wept with pain in my heart as I finally watched it again, just now. My empathy and personal awareness certainly has grown in 24 years since I saw the film's theatrical release. It's an amazing piece of cinematic achievement considering the time of its premiere. Really gutsy filmmaking, acting and direction for all involved. Seeing it again still makes my jaw drop because of all the nuances and story lines. It wasn't perfect looking at the film now. Some of it was a little dated, and perhaps I am being too picky regarding that. Yet it reawakens some troubled times that people faced in 1992, and how troubling things remain today. So much work is yet to be accomplished.

"The Crying Game" was probably great in 1991, and the reviews reflect this, and it's still a pretty good movie today, but I can't help but feel that it's a bit dated. The film begins at a carnival with a man having sex with a woman, before suddenly a few other men holding guns come in and take the man away with a bag over his head. So it gets off suddenly and it's pretty intriguing, before one man (who we soon learn is actually our main character) explains the situation directly to us. We learn that Fergus and several other Irish Republican Army men (and the one woman that was having sex before) have taken Jody, a British soldier. Fergus and Jody bond when Fergus watches over him, much to the dismay of the other IRA members. These scenes are very well executed and the blocking in camera movements in them mirror the state of their relationship as it changes. Watch the scene in which Jody describes the frog and the scorpion story to Fergus. Fergus also learns that Jody has a woman at home whom he admires, and he plays cricket. Jody asks Fergus to take care of his woman when he dies. This close bonding leads to a rather tense scene in which Jody is supposed to be killed, and then isn't because of Fergus' good nature, and then is, by forces that were beyond his control. This lack of control is one of the main sources of fear for our main character, and it works for a little, but after Jody is killed, the movie gets a bit wonky in pacing and style.Fergus then moves to try and find the woman he promised to care for for Jody. He is driven by the cricket field that he works by. From here, the film gets rather predictable and unnecessarily slow for a little while. He meets Dil. He falls in love with Dil, and gets rid of her bad abusive boyfriend, who is the source of much of the strange and unfunny humor in this part of the film. She gives him a blow job, then he finds out that she's a man, which is a way more expected "twist" than it should be. There are many obvious nods about her sexuality up to this point. It should be subversive, but it's not. Fergus is very surprised, and slightly disturbed, but he comes back to her, because he ultimately does care for Dil despite her sexuality just as he cared for Jody despite being his hostage. Even if he causes himself and those around him to sink, his nature is being good. The film begins to start building at a good pace towards the last 10 minutes from here, and the last 10 minutes are great, tense, meaningful, and quite impressive in terms of editing and such, but so much of the middle of the film feels unnecessary and outdated, such as the music, humor, and the predictable "twist".