Classic Movie Review: 'The Crying Game' Was Ahead of its Time

The Crying Game (1992)

Directed by Neil Jordan

Written by Neil Jordan

Starring Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Forrest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson

Release Date November 27th, 1992, February 1993 (Oscar Release)

Published February 20th, 2023

What stands out about Neil Jordan's The Crying Game 30 years later is how remarkably sensitive the film is. While the film's lasting legacy in popular culture centers on actor Jaye Davidson's penis, the actual film, The Crying Game, centers on sensitivity, intimacy and tenderness while also providing elements of a thriller and a spy movie. Neil Jordan brings forward a love story in The Crying Game in a way that had arguably never been explored before. Using a traditional thriller narrative about warring spies, guns, and murder, Jordan tells a love story about people who are struggling to find who they really are.

Stephen Rea stars in The Crying Game as Fergus, a member of the Irish Republican Army. History, as told by the British, would call the IRA terrorists. I truly have no idea what the actual legacy of the IRA is and I don't see a necessity to unpack the IRA here. The IRA is basically the vehicle that brings Fergus into contact with Jody (Forrest Whitaker), a young British soldier who is captured in Ireland and held for ransom. If the British will release a member of the IRA they are holding prisoner, then Fergus and is his fellow IRA members will release Jody.

Of course, Jody, and possibly Fergus, knows that Jody is going to die. The British do not negotiate with the IRA, they work to eliminate the IRA. Jody's only glimmer of hope comes in trying to convince Fergus to let him go. Thus begins a lengthy and intimate series of conversations over a three day period from Jody's kidnapping to the day the IRA plans to execute him. In this time, Jody and Fergus bond and writer-director Neil Jordan willfully layers in visual indicators that perhaps there is more than just friendly banter going on between these two seemingly very different men.

Knowing that his dire fate is approaching, Jody gives Fergus his wallet and with it, a photo of the woman Jody loves. Her name is Dil (Jaye Davidson) and she's a hairdresser back in Jody's home town. Jody begs Fergus to go and look in on Dil if Jody dies. What happens next will lead Fergus to Dil and the start of another complicated, deeply fraught, but genuine love story. Of course, history tells us what complicates this romance but the movie itself, is far more than that one pop culture footnote.

Yes, Dil is a pre-operative trans-woman and while Fergus seems not to know that, the movie isn't hiding anything. The journey is fully about Fergus trying desperately to be ignorant of his own sexuality. As Dil allows herself to be pursued by Fergus, she has no reason to think he's unaware of the fact that she is a trans woman. The two meet in a bar that is expressly full of LGBTQ people. Dil's looks, are quite attractive but not hard to clock, she's not trying to hide this from anyone, she's somewhere on the surgical transition spectrum.

Fergus, in my estimation, does know who Dil is and is only in denial because he hasn't fully come out to himself. He himself is in the midst of a transition from one identity to another, from having lived as a straight, cis-gender man, to realizing that he is gay or rather, bisexual. Labels are our enemy in this case, sexuality is a spectrum. Fergus is somewhere on the spectrum where he finds a lot of different people sexually attractive. This includes his former IRA comrade, Jude (Miranda Richardson), Jody, and now Dil who bridges a particular gap in Fergus's own sexual identity, acknowledging both an attraction to women and men.

Meanwhile, there is a thriller plot unfolding. Fergus disappeared after Jody died and his fellow IRA members were thought to have been killed. Then, out of the blue, Jude shows up and threatens to kill Dil if Fergus won't help her carry out an assassination. Jude wants Fergus to kill an English judge. If he does so, Jude will leave Dil alone. This leads to a series of complications where Fergus comes to try and hide Dil by having her revert to being a man. It's at once an act of love and loyalty and an act of cruelty and harm. It's a thesis statement on the complex nature of their relationship, fraught with the complexities of both of their shifting identities.

The Crying Game is vastly ahead of its time. The film doesn't get the credit it deserves for being a film that sensitively explores sexuality and sexual identity. Neil Jordan made a movie in 1992-93 that would be perfectly at home in today's discourse about the sexual spectrum. It's also just an incredibly accomplished film, filled with complicated characters, motivations and incredible acting. It's a marvel to watch and enlightening of what a stone age the early 1990s were. The fact that today The Crying Game is still associated with a man's penis is indicative of how childish and silly Americans were and in many ways still are when it comes to sexual identity.

Thirty years ago, just in time for the Academy Awards broadcast at the time, The Crying Game was released in theaters. People went to see what this most talked about twist in the story was and their reaction wasn't to praise the remarkable intimacy and sensitivity at play. Instead many just saw a penis on screen and pointed at it. That's the American attitude about sexual identity in a nutshell. So many of us are still five year olds who are fascinated by the difference between innies and outies. UGH!

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