The IRA thriller-comedy-romance is a seldom represented genre in film. It feels at times like The Crying Game
The point is that when you hit the twist, The Crying Game veers off in an entirely unexpected direction, and when the IRA plot reared its head again towards the end, it genuinely took me by surprise. I’d been so engrossed in the awkward romance story that I’d almost forgotten about that surreal 20 minutes at the beginning of the film, when Forest Whitaker does his best to convince us he’s a cockney (frankly, his best isn’t good enough).
We spend quite a bit of time bemoaning poor old Forest’s well-below-par accent skills in the podcast, but rightly so I think. His British accent is SO bad – and we’re talking sub-Keanu Reeves in Dracula here – that it’s almost impossible to get past it and enjoy the film. Ian actually resorted to putting on the subtitles for the first bit because he just couldn’t understand a damn thing Forest was saying, such is the garbled jumble of words that fall from his mouth. Is he Irish? Is he American? Is he English? The impression we’re left with is that he must have moved around a lot before ending up in the clutches of the IRA, possibly via space. Eventually though, by the time he reaches the speech about the scorpion and the frog, he seems to settle on a bizarre hyper-cockney accent that would make even Dick van Dyke blush. “Why didja sting me Mista Scorpion?” Shudder.
Anyway, going back to the twist, we decided there was no real way we could talk about The Crying Game without discussing THAT scene. We’re fairly sure that the whole world and his dog knows what it is by now, but just in case you don’t, there’s a big fat spoiler alert halfway through to let you know when to turn off, watch the film, and then come back and listen to the rest. But if you’ve ever watched Father Ted, The Simpsons, Ace Ventura, Hot Shots 2 or Naked Gun 3, you’ll probably have a good idea of what to expect.
If our review has piqued your interest in the film, you can buy the The Crying Game DVD from Amazon by clicking here
But without further ado, let us present our feature presentation:
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101 Films Podcast 036 – The Crying Game
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Director: Neil Jordan Year of release: 1992 Studio/Distributor: British Screen Productions/Channel Four Films/Miramax Country: UK
101 Films You Should Have Seen 
I have seen this film. I agree that the mix of thriller and offbeat romance seemed strange, with the IRA story bookending the romantic section of the film. The part of the story with the IRA holding the British solider captive was probably intended to set up a relationship between two characters and give context to the later love story, even though this could probably be accomplished by starting the film with the main character in London and use flashbacks to explain some of the background story. The use of the song “When a man loves a woman” and the title The Crying Game also seem to add to the confusion as they suggest the film is about a failed romance between a man and woman, with Forest Whitaker and Miranda Richardson playing the couple, until he is suddenly kidnapped.
I was confused about the age of the main character though. The character seems to have the personality of a naïve and uncertain young man, but the actor seems older than I would expect. Considering Northern Ireland was a highly religious society, I also thought the story had the potential for conflict as his actions were considered sinful. I agree with the comments about Forrest Whitaker’s accent, I could not tell if he was dubbed or not. I also did not realise Ace Ventura contained a parody of the film. with the theme song playing when Ace Ventura makes his deduction.