I had to watch this one for my victimology class's "hate crime" unit, as my teacher tends to assign relevent movies to go with things like reading. In this case, I wish she had stuck to simply assigning reading, though. Personally, I think people can learn much more about hate crimes from reading books or magazine articles and they don't get If this movie makes an impression on anybody at all, it will be for the three scenes involving Teena Brandon (or Brandon Teena, as she went by when masquerading as a boy) getting "dealt with" by two white-trash thugs named John and Tom who are...not happy to find out that "he" was really a "she." John and Tom go from quite disgustingly "confirming" Brandon's femininess in a bathroom and forcing "his" girlfriend, Lana, to see for herself (this scene is disgusting, but probably the most well-done and logical in the film), to raping Teena, to eventually murdering her. These are the scenes that will get people talking and determining the effectiveness of the film, which is um, well, really not that effective.
Honestly, if somebody's going to make a film about a hate crime victim, at least focus on somebody who was honest and hard working and didn't even deserve to get yelled at, let alone killed. Teena Brandon's story is unusual, but not exactly deserving of a motion picture, as she was a criminal, dead beat, and a chronic liar. While I don't condone what Tom and John DID to her, I find it strange for character's like Lana(especially Lana) NOT to have been angry or...horrified at Teena's antics, but of course those who were were looked at like villians.
And like another tragic, true story, "B*stard out of Carolina," these, of course rurally located characters, suffer from severe lacks of brain power. Why, for example, didn't Teena ("the great" Hilary Swank, whose potrayal is really not that different from the girl in "Just one of the Guys") GET OUT of that town? Maybe she was on her way after "the bathroom scene" (but got stopped by John and Tom), but there was still no need to hang around and mooch off Candice after her rape. Esepcially when she was less than well-received by the (stereotypically) bad cops...
As for John and Tom, if they were so horrified by Teena, why DID they rape her and constantly persue her, until her final death? Basically, after John and Tom were revealed as Terrible Villians, whatever personalities they had flew out the window. And why, by the way, was Candice shot and why (as somebody else pointed out) wasn't any information provided on what happened to her. Did she live or die? Did they get convicted for her murder. What happened to her baby? The more I think about it, the more I realized that a story about Teena Brandon might have been more interesting if told from the point of view of somebody like Candice (who was the one to first reveal to Tom and Lana her suspicions of Brandon ...not really being Brandon) than from Teena.
Instead, "we" get to watch Teena and her dumb criminal past (why did that paper, which was apparently lacking in news to report her not THAT severe crime in the first place, look as though it listed her age as 19, when very boring scenes involving Brandon's twenty-first birthday had practicailly just happened), and same-sex scenes (some one with Lana sitting topless for about ten-minutes and having a very loud orgasm was not only disgusting but EMBARRASSING to watch, considering I live in one of those apartments where you can "hear everything") and her useless high-speed car chase, and a bunch of other garbage that does not amount to much besides the aforementioned scenes with John and Tom. I don't think John and Tom should have done any of the things they did to Teena, but I don't necessarily think she was somebody worthy of having a motion picture AND a documentary (which I also get to watch) made about her, either.
Honestly, if somebody's going to make a film about a hate crime victim, at least focus on somebody who was honest and hard working and didn't even deserve to get yelled at, let alone killed. Teena Brandon's story is unusual, but not exactly deserving of a motion picture, as she was a criminal, dead beat, and a chronic liar. While I don't condone what Tom and John DID to her, I find it strange for character's like Lana(especially Lana) NOT to have been angry or...horrified at Teena's antics, but of course those who were were looked at like villians.
And like another tragic, true story, "B*stard out of Carolina," these, of course rurally located characters, suffer from severe lacks of brain power. Why, for example, didn't Teena ("the great" Hilary Swank, whose potrayal is really not that different from the girl in "Just one of the Guys") GET OUT of that town? Maybe she was on her way after "the bathroom scene" (but got stopped by John and Tom), but there was still no need to hang around and mooch off Candice after her rape. Esepcially when she was less than well-received by the (stereotypically) bad cops...
As for John and Tom, if they were so horrified by Teena, why DID they rape her and constantly persue her, until her final death? Basically, after John and Tom were revealed as Terrible Villians, whatever personalities they had flew out the window. And why, by the way, was Candice shot and why (as somebody else pointed out) wasn't any information provided on what happened to her. Did she live or die? Did they get convicted for her murder. What happened to her baby? The more I think about it, the more I realized that a story about Teena Brandon might have been more interesting if told from the point of view of somebody like Candice (who was the one to first reveal to Tom and Lana her suspicions of Brandon ...not really being Brandon) than from Teena.
Instead, "we" get to watch Teena and her dumb criminal past (why did that paper, which was apparently lacking in news to report her not THAT severe crime in the first place, look as though it listed her age as 19, when very boring scenes involving Brandon's twenty-first birthday had practicailly just happened), and same-sex scenes (some one with Lana sitting topless for about ten-minutes and having a very loud orgasm was not only disgusting but EMBARRASSING to watch, considering I live in one of those apartments where you can "hear everything") and her useless high-speed car chase, and a bunch of other garbage that does not amount to much besides the aforementioned scenes with John and Tom. I don't think John and Tom should have done any of the things they did to Teena, but I don't necessarily think she was somebody worthy of having a motion picture AND a documentary (which I also get to watch) made about her, either.