The Movie: Boys Don't Cry is based on the true story of a Teena Brandon who had a "sexual identity crisis" -- basically, she was a man inside. Dressed like a man, walked like a man, and talked like a man. Probably would have been no problem for her if she lived on one of the coasts, but it caused some big problems for her being in the middle of Bumfuck, Nebraska -- especially when the truth was exposed in the middle of such intolerance.

Hilary Swank won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and it was well, well deserved. You don't have to look too hard to see the incredible hard work she put into this performance. And the movie featured some great photography, including some cool time lapse effects which worked really well in some parts, though not so well in others. I guess what I'm getting at is that even though Hilary Swank delivered such a great performance, I didn't really think the movie was all that great.

The fact that it is based on a true story might automatically draw in the Lifetime channel movie watching crowd (and don't get me wrong, this movie is several notches above the standard Lifetime based-on-a-true story starring the mom from Growing Pains type movie), there wasn't enough there to totally keep me riveted to my seat. I can't really put my finger on it.

Maybe it was the fact that all the references to her being "put away" at the beginning didn't make a lot of sense to me the way it was prevented. Or maybe it was the moment in the movie where I was able to see exactly how it was going to end. I'm not exactly sure what it was about it, but yeah. Still, this is not a bad movie and if you have some interest in seeing it, I don't think you'll be wasting your time watching it.

The DVD: This film is presented with a fine anamorphic widescreen transfer that is very bright and clean with virtually no extraneous dust or scratches, and crisp enough to expose the grain structure of the film. The colors are somewhat muted (though that might have just been how it was supposed to be), but there was quite a bit of gradient stepping caused by the compression process, but nothing that detracted too much from the presentation of the movie.

The audio is also nice and crisp and encoded as 5.1 surround audio, though in a movie that is really dialog driven, it really doesn't make much difference at all. This ain't no action movie, so you won't be finding any wacky surround and subwoofer tricks around here. Special features are on the lighter side, including a few trailers, a promotional featurette and a director's commentary track.