March 15, 1993 -- ``The Crying Game,'' a dark horse in the race for Best Picture in the Academy Awards is an excellent film. One can see why it was nominated for best picture. It is original, well-written, well-photographed, well-acted, extremely well-directed and very poignant.

Forest Whitaker (``Good Morning, Vietnam'' and ``The Color of Money'') plays an English soldier kidnapped by the Irish Republican Army. He forms a friendship with one of his kidnappers, played by Stephen Rea. When Whitaker learns he is to be killed, he asks Rea to contact his girlfriend and tell her he was thinking of her when he was about to die.

Rea does contact her and then gets drawn into a very strange romance. The story ends with a violent shootout involving the IRA. Director Neil Jordan received Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nominations for his work by the Academy.

It is rated ``R'' for full frontal nudity, language and violence. Don't worry, I won't give away ``the secret'' of the film. It rates an A-.

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