Despite hype, portrayal is authentic!

Rating: 9/10 (18 November 2006)

I've read many of the reviews, and I'm real puzzled by the audience's blindness to the passion between the two cowboys. Can anybody give an example of better acting of passion? Given that cowboys are a special breed, and that the movie not only displays two men loving each other, but that two men in this very specific circumstance and faced with this very real challenge, I just don't know what someone could expect.
The so-called 'family values' crowd can complain about how a movie would 'celibrate' infidelity and a lifestyle that is 'ruinous', but they are missing the point. It's that kind of thinking that the two cowboys have caved to and tried to be what they knew, against their nature. At no point was this glossed over or amplified, it was and is real for today's and yesterday's rural men and women.
Yet the liberals complain that the movie was poop because the story would be stupid if the characters had been heterosexual. This would be true, because in the social context, two straight people falling in love and cheating is pretty common, and usually petty in nature. If you cannot distinguish the different social forces that make this story significant, then by all means, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE! Go to church and pray for your sins.
For those of you who claim there is no passion between these two men, you know nothing about cowboys or rural men. Step out of the metro-sexual mindset, this ain't the Gillmore Girls.
I've been fortunate, having experienced love like this. It's painful, it's frustrating, and sometimes it's worth every second of it. What those actors did was nothing short of accurate and they honored what this movie was about.
This movie was Shakespearean, and the acting was excellent. There were some things I didn't like, but they were stylistic and not even worth complaining about.