The Crying Game

Starring: Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson Director: Neil Jordan Original UK Premiere: 1992 Dvd Release: 16th September, 2002 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding

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The Crying Game is a 1968 novel by John Braine. The Crying Game is also a film by Neil Jordan, released in 1992. The original working title of this film was The Soldiers Wife. This film explores themes of race, nationality & sexuality against the background of England at the time of the Northern Irish Troubles. The film begins as a psychological thriller, as IRA foot soldier Fergus kidnaps Jody, a black British soldier. While Fergus guards Jody they develop some kind of bond. Jody is killed when he attempts to flee. Later, Fergus falls in love with Jodys   Dil. Fergus however, finds out that Dil is a transsexual woman & thus tries to come to grips with this. Posters Of The Crying Game

DVD Extras: The Crying Game comes to disc with a widescreen picture that reproduces adequately for an early 90s film. The soundtrack, though, has real presence. There are subtitles in English & Russian, though the theatrical trailer is hardly a major bonus. An interview or a commentary with Jordan, discussing the motivation behind the project, would really have benefited a film which cuts across genres so successfully as this.

An IRA film with a difference, Neil Jordans The Crying Game takes the Anglo-Irish conflict as the starting point for a thoughtful, often poignant & sometimes humorous examination of gender & identity. Stephen Rea is the IRA volunteer who befriends a kidnapped British soldier , then takes the questions of loyalty & instinct with him to London, where he falls for the dead mans girlfriend . Love & terrorism are fused in a violent & suspenseful denouement, where truth manifests itself in an unexpected yet meaningful way.

Miranda Richardson & Adrian Dunbar are persuasive as the IRA agents, & there are excellent cameos from Jim Broadbent as an East End barman & Tony Slattery as a property shark, all making the most of Jordans stylish, Academy Award-winning script. Anne Dudley contributes a moodily atmospheric score, with three versions of When a Man Loves a Woman to point up the gender issue.

British actress Miranda Richardson was born on 3 March 1958, in Southport, Lancashire, the second daughter of William & Marian Richardson. Born to a middle-class family, Richardson showed a desire to step into the character she was playing, indicating that she would go on to be thought of as one of Britains best, if sorely underrated, actresses. After deciding not to become a vet because of her squeamishness, the young Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, alongside Daniel Day-Lewis. In 1981, she made her stage debut in Moving at the Queens Theatre in London. Three years later, she made her big screen debut as platinum blonde nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom in Mike Newell s critically acclaimed biographical drama, Dance with a Stranger. Her performance in that film won her much praise & within a year, she had been cast by Steven Spielberg to appear in his Second World War drama, Empire of the Sun. Posters Of Miranda Richardson

Editors Choice: Spider, Snow White, Get Carter, Swann, The Crying Game, Dance With A Stranger, The Designated Mourner, Underworld, View DVDology

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