just mediocre cinema

Rating: 4/10 (23 August 2007)

I really do not understand what is the big deal. If this film was not about a gay relationship and if it was not for the controversy that the theme created nobody would have paid attention at best, or would have wondered why such a fine director as Lee or a fine actor as Jake Gyllenhaal became involved with such an average minus film.
The story is of a forbidden love as homosexual love is still a taboo from a moral point of view in the US, especially in the conservative mid-West. Yet, it is not an interesting love story, the heroes do not have chemistry, and what looks like an average work and boys relationship suddenly becomes a physical relationship out of the blue and then turns into or the director wants to make us believe that it turns into a relationship. The problem is that nothing int he story justifies this, excepting a vague memory of one of the heroes about his father condemning such relations. So what? Then, the heroes try to get 'normal' lives, which of course are filmed in a banal and boring environment compared to the pure natural environment of Mount Brokeback where the 'love story'happens. Come on, this is a cheap trick! The rest is just soap opera, nicely filmed, well acted by Jake Gyllenhaal especially who hardly can do something wrong, but this is no more than just this - soap opera. The last 15-20 minutes are completely worthless, the authors even ran out of a story.
I do not see the value of this film. I saw much better films in this genre like 'My Beautiful Laundrette' for example. In my opinion after the politically correct atmosphere disperses the film will be relegated to the gay relationships films niche.