Film critic Comrade Che detects a subtle homosexual subtext in the new Ang Lee film.

These cowboys do not shoot each other with anything remotely bullet-like. Any bursts to the chest don't happen in the main street where other people can see it happen, if you know what I mean. When the hero fires from the hip - it isn't a black-hatted cowboy that goes down. Something is clearly wrong here.

For years I've understood Westerns. There is a good guy who wears a white hat. He is a stranger in town and inevitably has solid grounds for revenge against someone. Above all else, he is typically inarticulate, uses archaic English and expresses himself best with a Smith and Wesson.

Heterosexual men like myself, I'm embarrassed to say, have been really enjoying this kind of fantasy since the dawn of the cinema. Nobody is really sure why Westerns appeal to men. The question of how John Wayne earned a reputation as a credible, charismatic actor is one of the great mysteries that MIT would need a wing of lab-coated social retards to solve. And even then, a few futile decades and a trillion dollars spent on research and pizza would lead to nothing.

But in fairness to heterosexual men we don't want to see a love story because we are not emotional voyeurs. It feels intrusive and annoying to endure a love story that doesn't contain at least twenty incidental and only slightly justified violent deaths. Most of us could handle Mr and Mrs Smith, but we were all scared off by the possibility of sappy romantic themes creeping into the film. Actually sappy romantic themes did creep into the film! Zero stars from me! Boo! Hiss!

The only love story that a half-way trustworthy straight man will profess to be interested in is his own (and for all I know, this is probably true of all men, whatever the orientation). A love story reminds a man of his deficiencies - of what we don't have or even what we can't have.

In case you haven't noticed, we can't arrange picnics if our lives depended on it. We can't recite poetry without knowing that we sound like complete tools. And unless you want to incur the risk of being struck by thirty odd foot of projectile vomit, do not ask us to watch any adaption of Anne of Green Gables.

It all seems tawdry, saccharine and sentimental - which, ladies, in case you haven't been getting why this bothers us so much, makes us doubt the authenticity of the narratives in our own real-life love stories. Our romances shake our lives, ladies - they're not a genre! Romance doesn't belong on a shelf in a store. It's way too important and personal to get all generic about.

This is why most men - when being honest with you - will admit that they'd rather eat raw roadkill than sit down and watch some dewey-eyed, gooey tear-jerker chick-flick about some ridiculous thwarted love affair. No man will put up with that sort of crap while there is any fight in him. If he does, ladies, then in the name of all that is good and just, find him lodging at the nearest Hostel for Broken Spirited Men and set the poor bastard free.

Anyway, your average straight man has no actual objection to other men loving each other, provided he doesn't have to watch it or be involved in any way. There will always be some who go about saying that their god, god-head, totem, invisible friend or sacred stick says that a man is evil because he wears stripes, has an accent, brown or white skin, a strange hair cut or even sleeps with men. If the world ignored bigots like these, the world would be a better place, and President Bush would be propping up a bar somewhere in Texas instead of playing videogames with real artillery.

But, unfortunately, the world doesn't ignore bigots - which brings us finally to the film in question: Brokeback Mountain.

Only bigots make this a film we should see. In any sane world, I wouldn't have to see this film. No one would be talking about it because the gay men would be struggling against giant insects or saving New York together from gigantic bears that shoot laser beams from their eyes (how frickin' cool would that be!?)

This film suffers from a lack of bears with lasers shooting from their eyes. And it's not worth your time in the same way The Constant Gardener managed to be. Brokeback Mountain is a film about people struggling with their sex lives - what can you expect? Nobody is mature enough to struggle with important things like poverty or starving children. This film might be much better than any cowboy movie you have ever seen but that's like saying donuts make more sense than scientology.

The only reason that your standard, upright walking heterosexual male is going to see this film is because he is somewhere in the early stages of a relationship and is still trying to show her how enlightened, mature and modern he is. Poor guy is probably still trying to host a picnic or two. No straight man alive gives a flying freight-truck about the back-door shenanigans of two burly, hairy cowboys who completely fail to shoot each other with bullets. And I pity any woman who thinks otherwise; I just hate it when men lie to women and get away with it.

No straight man should be ashamed to admit that this film sucks from his point of view. The film lacks guns, violence and vengeance as conspiciously as the Iraq War lacks a general air of good organization and forethought.

It is the opinion of this reviewer that without the three factors of guns, violence and vengeance that haunt other cowboy films there is absolutely no reason for the characters in this film to be wearing such silly hats.

There is some kind of homosexual context going on in the film, but it's nothing to obsess over. The only disturbing and unsettling thing about this film is the possibility that the producers are sitting on a few warehouses full of cowboy boots that they're going to making a killing off over the next year or so. There is also a danger that impressionable people in their twenties are going to quit their jobs and move to Wyoming.

This film has been described with words like 'heart-felt', 'bitter-sweet', 'yearning', 'haunted' or a favorite of mine: 'will live with you for a long time'. I mean, really. Obviously this is a film that goes far beyond the limited attempt of praise it has received. This is a gay film - not because it scandalously and rebelliously treats homosexuality as a normal part of human life, but because it is a film surrounded by platitudes. That's how you can tell that it has polarized the sorts of people who typically debate the question and place of homosexuality in society. Bigots fear films like this. The piously well-intended will love it for its ideas. Nobody, as far as I'm aware, has yet pointed out the conspicuous lack of bears that shoot laserbeams from their eyes.

The sickest thing about this film is that two men in gay hats can cause such outrage for giving each other a bit of a hug and a kiss instead of shooting at each other in the main street of town at midday. The latter behavior would be okay wouldn't it, people?

Somewhere in Virginia tonight, Pat Robertson is laying in bed, freaking out about the Secret Hollywood Agenda to spread Gay, Liberal Anti-Santa Values. But 'Get Rich or Die Trying' is the movie of our generation.

Conclusion

Brokeback Mountain is a film many men are forced to endure in order to pretend to be righteous for their girlfriends, on the mistaken belief that their girlfriends like this sort of film for any reason other than Heath Ledger. You poor, poor saps.

Brainsnap would like to add that this the important themes explored in this beautiful film might also appeal to gay men and women. We cannot, however, recommend this film because our social conscience prevents us from endorsing films in which the characters wear cowboy hats.