The Crying Game

Drunk at a South Armagh fairground, black British soldier Jody (Whitaker) is abducted by the IRA and held hostage on a farm. His jailer Fergus (Rea) comes to respect and understand his prisoner, and after an army raid, heads for London to seek out Jody's lover, hairdresser and chanteuse Dil (Davidson)... It's perhaps surprising that Jordan's thriller hangs together at all. After the opening carnival scene, it virtually turns into a statically theatrical two-hander; then, when Fergus reaches London, both locations and focus become more diffuse as the narrative steadily winds itself up for a bloody finale. There's a problem not only in the clumsy structure, but in Jordan's determination to keep surprising us with twists. Even though the whole is never more than the sum of its parts, the film does work, raises a plethora of questions concerning loyalty, violence and the nature of desire, and is in some respects a summation of the various themes that have emerged from Jordan's work.