The Crying Game. - movie reviews

National Review, Feb 15, 1993 by John Simon

In Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, Jody, a black British soldier, is held hostage in Northern Ireland by the IRA. He was enticed by a girl, Jude, from a fairground to a deserted spot and, just as he mounted her, nabbed by the IRA (one of whose regulars she is), crowned with a ghastly black hood, and spirited off to a distant hideaway. Unless the British release an IRA bigwig they are holding within three days, Jody dies. Fergus, the IRA volunteer who guards him most of the time, is a decent fellow who takes the stifling hood off Jody whenever he can. Step by step, the two men become friends. Interestingly, the two most intimate things they share are, first, the picture of Dil, Jody's attractive girlfriend, whom Fergus is to look up if Jody is shot; and, second, the fact that, the handcuffed Jody being unable to urinate otherwise, Fergus must take out his penis for him and, later, tuck it back in, midst embarrassment that turns into loudly shared laughter. (We are not shown the modus operandi for defecation.)

When he must be led into the surrounding woods to his doom, Jody runs ahead of Fergus shouting, "You would not shoot a brother in the back?" We don't learn how Fergus would have acted (cheap trick No. 1) because a British tank, a machina ex machina, conveniently runs Jody over. The IRA group is seemingly exterminated, but Fergus escapes to London, changes his looks and name (to Jimmy), and becomes a construction worker. He is haunted by the image of Jody, and finally looks up his sexy black girlfriend, Dil, at the shabby hair salon where Jody told him she works, and gets a haircut from her.

He now hangs out at the shady bar Dil frequents, and eventually be-friends her, especially after he beats up an obnoxious former lover whom he catches beating her up. He is taken into her apartment, full of snapshots of Jody. It is under his, as it were, approving gaze that Jimmy and Dil become lovers. But Jimmy must surmount a big hurdle: to accept that Dil is not what she seems to be. At first he is, literally, nauseated and brutalizes Dil. Gradually, love prevails.

Cheap trick No. 2 is that it should have taken Jimmy so long to figure things out; No. 3 is that kind of moral blackmail the filmmakers have practiced on reviewers and audiences not to reveal the Big Surprise. At this point, Jude and Maguire, the leader of the IRA group, who also managed to escape, reappear, and, having (unexplainedly) tracked down Jimmy-Fergus, threaten to kill Dil unless Fergus performs a political assassination for them. As has been remarked by others, The Crying Game (titled after a song Dil performs at the said shady bar) does not truly cohere. The IRA thriller and the love triangle cry out for separate movies; though they can, as here, be mashed together, it shortchanges both.

But there is an even graver problem, the Big Surprise that we have all been harangued into not divulging. At what time may a critic address such an issue? Is it all right by now to discuss how the witches' prophecies in Macbeth come true? After all, there is one person born every minute who has not yet seen or read the play. Can one evaluate a work of art - and I am quite sure Jordan views his film as such - without going into what most of it hinges on? And is that kind of surprise honest art or merely sensationalism? In which case, might not part of the critic's task be warning his readers?

Let me say, then, that The Crying Game is homosexual propaganda and not art; not because of the kind of propaganda it is, but because it is propaganda at all, and so the opposite of art. This said, the film, aside from its loopholes, is well written and directed by Jordan, and has some terrific acting. The American Forest Whitaker manages a tolerable accent for Jody, and gives a decent performance, although he ought to shed some weight if he is to play romantic roles. As Jude, Miranda Richardson, a usually fine actress, overacts ferociously, but has moments. As a quizzical bartender, Jim Broadbent is smashing.

Capital work comes from the two leads, Stephen Rea, as Fergus-Jimmy, and Jaye Robinson, as Dil. Rea is the kind of actor who strikes you as homely, but grows on you tremendously as you realize the humanity in and behind his face. Similarly, his apparent underacting slowly but surely builds to revelations of great inner depth and complexity, and becomes their truest expression. That kind of surprise is the very essence of art. (You can see Rea now on Broadway in Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, and I cannot urge you strongly enough to do so.) Jaye Davidson is, appropriately, much more flamboyant, yet never hammy, and becomes very touching in the enactment of a near-impossible role with great persuasiveness. I am not sure that Davidson's looks and voice are exactly right, but they, too, manage to come extremely close. Although I do not buy the thesis of The Crying Game, it holds the interest and is, at times, genuinely moving.