feel cheated

Rating: 3/10 (6 August 2006)

Given all the hype I expected a really great movie. It gets my 3 stars only because of gorgeous scenery. It was unrelentingly dreary, depressing and dull. Why did every character have to be a stereotype? From Jack's father to his big haired wife? Why was there no charm in any of the domestic interiors or interactions of the secondary characters? How did a postcard get stamped "deceased" How would the post office know that? Did the wife stamp it and send it back? Altho it was my understanding that Jack had been murdered by homophobes, the viewing of the scene was less clear. Could it not have been a fantasy in Ennis' head because of his childhood experience? Or if in fact a real murder why would the wife not have said so? Even in the 1980's a homosexual could not be murdered and there be no investigation which Ennis could easily have found out. There was absolutely no chemistry between the two characters of Jack and Ennis. This was my first introduction to Heath Ledger and it was an unfortunate one, his character and his looks, lack of ambition and callous treatment of his wife did not make him appealing (to me) to anyone of either sex. This was a very tedious film, it was sort of like jumping rocks in a stream, you just go from one year to the next with no purpose except to get to the other side. One reviewer did ask why Alma jr. wanted to live with her Dad. That she explained was because her Mom had a new baby and that is often a desire of children of divorced parents. . . to switch from one to the other. No, she did not know her Dad was in a gay relationship, but her Mother did and why she did not confront her husband but instead waved him off for yearly trysts seemed kind of unbelievable to me. This may have been a marvelous short story but it did not deserve the screen treatment it received. Either in length, execution, expression, acting or writing. Sometimes shorter really is better.