In 1963 Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are hired to herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain, Wyoming. In the long solitary months together, their bond of friendship grows reluctantly into something more, in the form of both physical and emotional love for each other.

Before I go on, there may be some spoilers in here, so you may wish to stop now.

For all of the hype, I found this movie a little disappointing. I suspect most of the reason it was heralded as a great movie and awarded as such, was largely to do with the idea of a movie with gay themes going mainstream to a wider audience than perhaps better movies which didn't make it beyond smaller arthouse cinema screenings.

I gather the idea of this movie was to express the issues surrounding homosexual relationships in the conservative west of the 1960s. The secrecy required, the fear of their forbidden love being discovered, the legitimate danger of coming clean. Rather than feeling sorry for Ennis and Jack, however, I felt myself feeling more sorry for their respective wives locked into these loveless marriages. The empathy felt with these women made it hard to sympathise with the men. Even if they were to remain closeted, couldn't they have the decency to divorce their wives? Would anyone feel sorry for Jack and Ennis if they were cheating on their wives in a heterosexual relationship?

This movie was long, really long, without that much happening. It probably could have been cut down by about an hour, which would help to build more of a connection with the story, than just looking at my watch. Towards the end the plot started getting kind of aimless. I felt like they killed off Jack just because there was no clear direction to go in. There was nothing in the plot to build up towards that death. No apparent reason beyond him being found out for being gay and to inject life into a failing plotline.

I also found the idea of this being a controversial film kind of farcical as well. Maybe it was challenging for mainstream American cinema, but then this industry is notorious for being predictable and conservative. Hollywood seems to prefer safe formula movies that are guaranteed to make money, than taking a risk on something new. Publicising extremist homophobic complaints made for great marketing techniques.

Most notably on this conservatism, and I've heard a number of people from the gay community agreeing on this, for all of their loving relationship, there was very little in the way of physically expressing it. When it was, it was in the most lame and implied sense.

What we end up with is a long, boring movie, with a vague plot, too scared to break any real boundaries,This is far from Ang Lee's best work and not worth seeing. 1 star out of 5.