Brokeback Mountain (3.5 Money Trains)

Directed by Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk), Brokeback Mountain clocks in at a little over two hours, but it seems longer. The action starts, no wait, the story starts in 1963 with two 19 year old lads, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) landing a summer job guarding sheep. And you know what that makes them? Shepherds. Not cowboys, shepherds. Anyway, one bloke is to spend all day and all night with the sheep on the mountain, while the other has to stay in camp cooking and otherwise being superfluous. With limited conversation, and an accent so bad from Our Heath that the film really needed subtitles, these guys strike up an unlikely friendship that quickly progresses to … something more. But we all knew that, so it's not like I'm giving anything away.

Anyway, this summer job ends and our two heroes meet up every so often for the next twenty years to go "fishing" together up in the hills, but of course it's all very difficult because they're both married with kids. Nonetheless, the summer fling becomes a lifelong love, grounded on scintillating conversation and intellectual brinkmanship. Only joking, I have no idea what either character saw in the other. I certainly didn't feel anything for either of them, or for anyone at all in the film, for that matter. This may be how Mr Lee makes it feel like twenty years of your life have actually passed watching the film, even though none of the actors, men or women, appear to age by more than two.

Around the end of the second act, you're starting to wonder how Mr Lee is going to wrap it up and, if you're as jaded as me, you'll come to the same conclusion about there only being one way out of this miserable situation.

But this isn't a film about neat conclusions and happy endings, it's more a film with a message, and indeed I think this one has several. To wit:

• You can't chose who you fall in love with (which is a pity because it can really destroy your life), so maybe you shouldn't fight it (which could end up destroying your life); ·
• Or you could rephrase to: follow your heart, not social mores, and to hell with your life getting destroyed; ·
• Don't live in a small country town – they're real shit-holes and will probably destroy your life;

I reckon this will get a gong at the Academy Awards just because it's about gay cowboys (shepherds, actually!) and the Academy probably thinks it's about time to acknowledge them – remember a few years back when they decided to acknowledge black people and gave one to Halle Berry? Or the time they decided to acknowledge talentless twits who can't act or do accents and gave one to Nicole Kidman? At the very least, it should get the nod for Best Hair. Check out Anne Hathaway's do at the end of the film.

All up, 3½ Money Trains