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Brokeback Mountain
Focus Features

Brokeback Mountain reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 87 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.2 out of 10
based on 41 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 1004 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid, Linda Cardellini, Anna Faris, and Scott Michael Campbell

Set against the sweeping vistas of Wyoming and Texas, the film tells the story of two young men -- a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy -- who meet in the summer of 1963, and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, one whose complications, joys, and tragedies provide a testament to the endurance and power of love. (Focus Features)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Larry McMurtry
Diana Ossana
E. Annie Proulx (short story)
 
DIRECTED BY: Ang Lee  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: April 4, 2006 
Theatrical: December 9, 2005 
RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

Led all movies with eight Academy Award nominations for 2005, including Best Picture, Lead Actor (Ledger) and Director (Lee, who won the award). Received seven Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), for which it won. Named Best Picture of 2005 by the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Southeastern Film Critics Association, and Boston Society of Film Critics. Winner, Golden Lion, 2005 Venice Film Festival.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Brokeback Mountain is that rare thing, a big Hollywood weeper with a beautiful ache at its center. It's a modern-age Western that turns into a quietly revolutionary love story.
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100
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable Brokeback Mountain hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.
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100
The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Anne Proulx's 1997 short story in the New Yorker has been masterfully expanded by screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to provide director Lee with his best movie since "Sense and Sensibility" in 1995.
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100
Premiere Glenn Kenny
Lee and company handle the particulars of the tale with the requisite meticulousness and exquisite taste that marks all the director's films.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Carries a lot of emotional power.
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100
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy because these men have found something that many people, of whatever sexual persuasion, never find - true love. And they can't do anything about it.
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100
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn.
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100
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Confidently directed by Ang Lee and featuring sensitive and powerful performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and a breathtaking Heath Ledger, this film is determined to involve us in the naturalness and even inevitability of its epic, complicated love story.
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100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Brokeback Mountain aspires to an epic sweep and achieves it, though with singular intimacy and grace.
100
USA Today Mike Clark
It's a heart-wrenching portrayal of unfulfilled Wyoming love, but this time, we don't mean Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in "Shane."
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100
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Gently unfolds into an epic, heartbreaking love story that's far greater than the sum of its parts.
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100
Newsweek David Ansen
There's neither coyness nor self-importance in Brokeback Mountain--just close, compassionate observation, deeply committed performances, a bone-deep feeling for hardscrabble Western lives. Few films have captured so acutely the desolation of frustrated, repressed passion.
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100
Empire Staff (Not credited)
The real revelation here is Heath Ledger as the bruised and sometimes brutal Ennis. His tortured secret is the tragedy and the ecstasy of this powerful and moving film, a smart study of relationships that could but can't and never will be.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Brokeback Mountain has been described as "a gay cowboy movie," which is a cruel simplification. It is the story of a time and place where two men are forced to deny the only great passion either one will ever feel. Their tragedy is universal.
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100
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
This poignant, wise and subtle picture -- which, yes, happens to be the best movie of the year -- should be approached with humble expectations. Lee's approach to this delicate material is suffused with melancholy, metaphors and small, telling touches that favor subtlety over exclamation points and rough-hewn simplicity over grandiloquence.
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100
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
An experience as tender and troubling as any you're likely to get - or not likely, if this subject puts you off.
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100
The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
So in all the tumult about this film, the eruption of its subject into wide attention and the consequent revelations about cowboys' lives in the past, let us--without forgetting the American sources of the screenplay--acknowledge the anomaly that the director is Chinese.
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91
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Beautiful, poetic, mournful, at once rich and spare, Brokeback Mountain takes a daring conceit and creates of it an overwhelming work of art that should speak to anyone capable of love.
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91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's by far the most uncompromising and unapologetic gay-themed drama ever made for a wide release by a major Hollywood studio with name stars.
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90
LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Brokeback Mountain is at once the gayest and the least gay Hollywood film I've seen, which is another way of saying that Lee has a knack for culling universality from the most specific identities.
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90
Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
If, in its groundbreaking assault on the mythology of the American West, Brokeback Mountain gets a lot of people into a furious lather, so be it.
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90
New York Magazine Ken Tucker
The remarkable thing director Ang Lee has done is to have made a film that remains firmly in the Western genre while never retreating from its portrayal of a tragic love story.
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90
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
This slow and stoic movie, hailed as a gay Western, feels neither gay nor especially Western: it is a study of love under siege.
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89
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
It's possible to point to some weak spots in Brokeback – its seeming multiple endings, the lack of clarity about certain images, some digressions – but there is no movie this year that has moved my heart more than Brokeback Mountain.
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88
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Brokeback may be too polished for some people, too elegantly dispassionate in its study of choked passion.
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88
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
A good and eloquent Wyoming-set love story with a great performance at its heart.
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88
TV Guide Ken Fox
While Gyllenhaal is a competent actor, Ledger - surprisingly enough - is becoming a great one, and the levels of intensity they bring to their roles render this romantically star-crossed relationship emotionally lopsided.
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88
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
While Gyllenhaal has playful puppy eyes and energy, his performance as Jack is a blur of mustaches, sideburns and spurs that never achieves the weight of Ledger's.
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80
The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
It allows Lee to draw out a theme that's been present in his films from the start: the notion that repressed passion does no one any good. In Brokeback Mountain, it turns vibrant men ghostly.
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80
Variety Todd McCarthy
This ostensible gay Western is marked by a heightened degree of sensitivity and tact, as well as an outstanding performance from Heath Ledger.
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75
New York Post Kyle Smith
This is one of the best serious films about homosexuality ever made, but though it's sad and sobering it's still only a rough draft of a great movie.
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75
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Isn't for everyone, but for those who are not bothered by the homosexual relationship, it offers a study in yearning, love, and loss. It didn't affect me as deeply as either "The Bridges of Madison County" or "The Remains of the Day," but it evokes some of the same feelings.
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75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Ledger proves what we've suspected all along -- this is his picture, and he steals it brilliantly.
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70
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This is the kind of tasteful tearjerker that's often overrated and smothered with prizes because it flatters our tolerance and sensitivity.
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70
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Brokeback Mountain possesses handsome and sympathetic lead players, magnificent scenery, heartbreaking melodrama, righteousness and cultural import. But as a testament to the importance of following one's passion, it's devoid of one crucial thing: passion.
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70
Village Voice J. Hoberman
The most straightforward love story--and in some ways the straightest--to come out of Hollywood, at least since "Titanic."
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70
Time Richard Schickel
For all its brave beginnings and real achievements--its assault on western mythology, its discovery of a subversive sexual honesty in an unexpected locale--Brokeback Mountain finally fails to fully engage our emotions.
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60
Slate David Edelstein
Brokeback Mountain could use a little more of it--by which I mean more sweat and other bodily fluids. Ang Lee's formalism is so extreme that it's often laughable, and the sex is depicted as a holy union: Gay love has never been so sacred.
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50
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Takes great pains to be a compassionate love story; but the filmmaking itself, self-consciously restrained and desiccated, is inert and inexpressive.
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50
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Romanticism fights stoicism to a draw, and the movie grows ever more static, too. Down to the quasi-ambiguous hate-crime finish, Brokeback Mountain comes as close to being a still life as you can get with human characters.
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40
Film Threat Phil Hall
This much-ballyhooed gay cowboy melodrama is an inert disappointment.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 1004 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

malaysian fan ann gave it a1:
The feeling is so strong if ...you knew that no body knew you stuck in love with that man..normal people don't understand that feeling..so of course they feel disguisting and ..decent it. you people don't know...that miracle feeling....man love man even just for sex...but it's very strong...and make u cry and cry....my god.

roman m gave it a10:
This movie has dug so far into my soul and touched me so deep that its haunting effect may never go away. never has a movie made me take a long look in the mirror at myself, the life i've led, wanted to lead, what i've had to let go and why., what and who fills my heart with unimaginable joy and how sometimes that joy has been turned into unimaginable sorrow. this film has taken me to places that terrify me and leave me speechless while at the same time makes me realize what a precious gift i have been given....the ability to give and receive love in all its graces and hearrtbreaks. i will never take that gift f or it sunkown outcome for granted.but pursue it and be thankful i was allowed the journey.

carpe diem gave it a2:
As a gay man with gay friends... none of us felt this was a realistic depiction of the way it happens. This movie is a tragedy (in the Romeo and Juliet sense) that could have had power, but failed because of it's completely non-believable depiction of how the relationship formed. If anyone thinks Ang Lee may be homosexual... I would have to say he can't be. Not if he directs a movie with such an unrealistic development of a gay relationship.

Steffi C gave it a10:
I Loved Heath Ledger in this film, i cried three times with his performance. Heath and Jake were the right actors to cast in this film. Excellent film!

Jesus black gave it a10:
Brokeback mountain is the 4th best film i've ever seen. it's amazing that ang lee, who created the hulk,(the worst movie i've ever seen), could create such an untimely and beautiful masterpiece. it makes me proud to be gay!!!

Jonathan F gave it a10:
One of the most remarkable films I have ever seen. It is perfect. Heath Ledger is brilliant, and the fact that he is gone only makes this film that much more heart-wrenching. This movie belongs to Ledger, but you cannot deny the accomplishments of the rest of the cast - Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway are fantastic, as is Kate Mara as Ledger's daughter. The final scene is one of excruciating emotion. What a truly incredible film. Also, one of the most important ever made.

Al S. gave it a10:
Perfect in every literary aspect, superbly complemented by the musical score.

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