Western movies have long been a cornerstone of American filmmaking, conjuring images of legends like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The genre has produced an array of classics, ranging from the action-packed flicks of the ’50s to the spaghetti westerns of the ’60s, as well as contemporary films such as The Power of The Dog and The Hateful Eight.

The New York Times included one Oscar-winning film in their selection of top Westerns since the turn of the millennium. Brokeback Mountain has also garnered considerable attention amongst film critics as one of the finest Western films. Directed by Ang Lee, it stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys who meet during the 1960s while working as sheep herders on Wyoming’s fictitious Brokeback Mountain.

Rotten Tomatoes’ critics consensus describes the film: “A beautiful, epic Western, Brokeback Mountain’s love story is imbued with heartbreaking universality thanks to moving performances by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.”

“The lonesome chill that seeps through Ang Lee’s epic western, Brokeback Mountain, is as bone deep as the movie’s heartbreaking story of two cowboys who fall in love almost by accident,” extolled Stephen Holden in his 2005 review for The New York Times.

“It is embedded in the craggy landscape where their idyll begins and ends. It creeps into the farthest corners of the wide-open spaces they share with coyotes, bears and herds of sheep and rises like a stifled cry into the big, empty sky that stretches beyond the horizon.”

Both Ledger and Gyllenhaal were broadly applauded for their work, with Mick LaSalle of SFGate praising Ledger in particular.

“Both actors do memorable work, but Ledger has the better role, and he makes the strongest choices,” he noted.

“He gives Ennis a voice and mannerisms that are utterly idiosyncratic, and then inhabits those choices psychologically, making sense of the locked-down speech, the haunted look and the strong but diffident manner. He completely transforms himself.

“It’s a performance that was thought through in detail and then lived in the moment, and it’s one of the most beautiful things in movies this year.”

The film is an adaptation of a short story by Annie Proulx, first published in The New Yorker in 1997. It has since been transformed into a West End play and an opera bearing the same name.

“Brokeback Mountain is far more than a gay western,” Rick Moody penned in a 2005 review for The Guardian. “It’s a great American love story.”

Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams portray the wives of the lead characters, as the film traces the complex love story of two cowboys over several years.

Is Brokeback Mountain a Western film?

Entertainment Weekly placed Brokeback Mountain in fifth place in a list of the 35 best Western movies from 1990 to 2024.

The publication said it was an “esssential” inclusion: “Though far from a Western in terms of structure, Brokeback Mountain is a powerfully emotional look at the model of American masculinity and the cowboy, and how that model fails two men completely.

“Anchored by four stellar performances from Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway, the film is an essential entry in the genre, regardless of its utter lack of shoot-outs.”

They defended the film’s standing as a Western movie, adding: “Anyone doubting Brokeback’s status as a Western should note that the script was penned by Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and his co-writer, Diana Ossana.”