THERE is a scene in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (Pearl, 9.30pm) which is crucial to the plot yet which, by the standards normally employed in deciding what's suitable for us to view, would not have been shown on television in puritannical Hong Kong.
Fortunately, for both first time viewers and for we who've seen this engrossing, if rather perverted, thriller, drama and romance, TVB has decided to challenge the normal taboos employed here by leaving in the potential offending appendage. Had they not done so, first-timers would have missed, as it were, an important point.
The Crying Game's message - that love conquers all - is as old as the sky, but Jordan communicates it with such bravado it is difficult not to be swept along. The film received an Oscar nomination as Best Picture and deserved to pick up the gong, just for being different.
Every performance is a tour de force. Stephen Rea is an IRA foot soldier, part of a small group of ferocious terrorists which includes Miranda Richardson and Adrian Dunbar. They kidnap a British soldier (Forest Whitaker) in Northern Ireland and attempt to exchange him for a group of imprisoned IRA members. When things go wrong Rea heads for London and melts into an underworld of illegal Irish labour.
Haunted by the kidnapped soldier, he looks up his girlfriend (Jaye Davidson) and is entranced by her. The relationship appears to be proceeding along conventional lines, until that moment of revelation. Things are further complicated when Rea's old IRA friends come-a-calling, eager that he should help them with one last assassination.
There are three major surprises in this film, all of which could have derailed the narrative in the hands of a lesser scriptwriter than Jordan. The plot is also something of a high-wire act, but Jordan pulls it off. Conventional Hollywood romances place obstacles in front of their lovers. With its final revelation, The Crying Game presents them with a real dilemma.
ROBERT De Niro gained around 22.5 kilos to play the older, fatter, middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (World, 9.35pm). This is another uncompromisingly brutal and emotionally devastating film, often painful and unpleasant to watch, but so brilliantly handled by director Martin Scorsese that many critics see it as the best film of the 80s.
