Boys Don't Cry: Critic Reviews

Lyrical and galvanizing.

Stunning.

Peirce seems to have researched her subject with grad-school-thesis intensity.

Driven by performances of such luminous humanity that they break your heart.

Boys Don't Cry not only revisits the crime, but convinces us we're being taken inside it.

Powerful and unpretentious.

[Hilary Swank] has come out of nowhere to deliver one of the year's finest pieces of acting.

One of the year's best American films!

The film is framed, too unquestioningly, as a transgender Rebel Without a Cause, with Brandon the martyred innocent who dies for her infatuations.

A stirring, emotionally true testament to foolish bravery as well as shameful evidence of the severity with which it is so often punished.

Flawless acting by the ensemble.

A haunting, superbly made film.

Swank is impressive in the lead role.

With its constant juxtaposition of blazing nighttime highwayscapes and the flat Nebraska skyline, Boys Don't Cry manages to perfectly evoke both a life spent in aimless forward motion and the stifling boredom Brandon was so desperate to escape.

The movie lets down the material. It's too cool: all attitude, no sizzle--horror under glass.

Director Pierce and Bienen and the expert cast engage us in the actuality of these rootless, hopeless, stoned-out lives without sentimentalizing or romanticizing them.

...undoubtedly benefits from Swank's searing, justifiably lauded performance.

Nail-tough yet poetic.

The shock is not in the tragic ending, but the devastating emotional effect Kimberly Peirce is able to achieve through mere nuance.

The casting is nothing short of brilliant.

A suspenseful piece of work. Expect to be depressed.

Four years ago, said director Kimberly Peirce, she could not have made this film and thought it was spectacular to see the Oscars flash the subject of the story across America and around the world.