It’s not a glamorous job, but apparently the pay is good (they don’t actually mention it – I’m assuming that it must be, or they wouldn’t do it for months on end). Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) go up the mountain as strangers, but they come down as a whole lot more than friends, which is a tough thing in the sixties. It’s not an easy thing now. Then they go their separate ways.

Jack comes back the next year, hoping that he will be sent back to the mountain with Ennis, but Ennis doesn’t show up and the boss (Randy Quaid) lets Jack know, in no uncertain terms, that his kind isn’t welcome there. Apparently he caught them cavorting the previous year and doesn’t want any of that going on, at least while he’s footing the bill. So for the next four years or so, Jack and Ennis live out their own lives. But then Ennis gets a postcard saying that Jack is coming through town, and it’s like they never separated.

In fact, when they meet in the parking lot of Ennis’ home, it’s all they can do to keep standing – and they are spotted by Ennis’ wife through the door, something that she’ll keep hidden, but she also has her suspicions. Jack and Ennis supposedly start going on regularly fishing trips, but she sends a note along one time, and it comes home from one trip where they caught all sorts of fish, and the note didn’t move, so she knows what’s happening.

Meanwhile, life moves on, and both men have wives and families, but Jack tries to get Ennis to leave so they can have their own ranch, but at that time, such a thing just isn’t possible. It seems that Jack has a desire for Ennis a bit more than Ennis has for Jack. One time, Jack heads to Mexico to get himself a little Mexican boy, but that ultimately turns into nothing more than fodder for a fight the next time they meet – frankly, I suspected that Jack would catch a disease or something.

In the end, neither man leaves his family, at least in that sense. Jack dies at a young age, and while his wife says that he was changing a tire when it exploded, images on-screen seem to indicate that he was beaten to death – perhaps because he was found out for his tendencies. It’s also possible that this was just Ennis imagining that something happened. Tough to say.

While the acting was good, and things moved along okay for the length of the movie (it did cover twenty years or so, after all) it could have picked up the pace a bit more. I know it wasn’t really an upbeat film, but it just seemed to drag on and on. Throwing in something a little more interesting may have made it better.

Rated R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence.