I never saw this film, but because I was into film theory soon after it was made, I basically knew EVERYTHING about The Crying Game. Basically this was tres avant garde even to this day. Male full frontal nudity, especially as it was used in this film, is rarely shown whereas female nudity is a tiresome given. Though I appreciate The Crying Game as a turning point in the mainstreaming of queer cinema, it is actually a very ancient, even Roman approach to sexuality. The woman by nature is not to be trusted, treated as an equal or be in any male domain whereas the man can take any form, any role and is preferable as a romantic equal. The woman is punished for transgressing her boundaries, but the man can take feminine qualities and escape gender boundaries to the approval of all. But at its heart, like Avatar, it is another film about the great white hope. Stephen Rea gets to be a political revolutionary with a heart that transcends national, racial and almost, but not quite sexual boundaries; thus not truly a victory for queer cinema as some would theorize. The black man either gets to be feminized and rewarded or the symbol of an established, military superior that must be rendered helpless & ineffectual, ultimately punished by death, though I found the latter to be quite jarring. The black man captured, surrounded & threatened by a group of white men out of context evokes a different image. I think that ultimately this superficially revolutionary movie has an establishment heart & has done everything visually in its power to root for the British & male & show as deviant the IRA & female. I honestly have to say that I am tired of heterosexual filmmakers using old stereotypes of gay men as anti-women.