Defies Credibility

Rating: 4/10 (20 January 2006)

I can only give this 4/10, such is the disappointment with the build-up to this much-praised movie. I thought both main characters were painfully superficial, and the scenarios hoping to portray their love for one another (as well as the threats to their union) spanned from the implausible at best, to the Disneyesque at worst. The interplay of emotion among all the characters I thought unrealistic, especially between Ennis and his long-suffering wife; Randy Quaid as the boss-man both spies the guys in a bit of innocent horseplay and concludes instantly that the two are lovers (I almost walked out after this scene, the plot's credibility destroyed). The scenery of Wyoming is the most beautiful part of the flick, but I could have waited for that and the whole movie to come out on DVD. That, or re-watched "Same Time, Next Year" with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, which is the same movie except the exchange for gay cowboys. Another thing about this movie which was annoying was its trite, badly-written ending. The movie spans from 1963 to the early 1980's, so towards the end, when Ennis hugs Jack for what turns out to be the last time, Ennis' hand has what looks like Kaposi Sarcoma sores, and I'd bet that at least half the audience, like me, expected him to turn out to have AIDS (he didn't). By the end I was thinking, this looks more like a propagandist open-letter to the people of Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was tortured to death. Can the minds of rednecks there be changed by showing how manly-man Ennis, at a July 4th picnic, can beat the crap out of two burly 250-pound cowboys in 3 seconds flat, then meet up with Jack and fall into each others' tender-loving arms? I sincerely doubt that the rustic folk of Wyoming, or any other such conservative-minded place, would be so easily swayed, especially when the story itself is presented so shoddily.