I met some interesting people (should've got some numbers), wondered why the gorgeous guy standing in front of me was sweating so much, and only heard the question "How many people does the theater hold?" about 50 times. Don't get me wrong. I liked the movie for what it was but I was also disappointed by what it wasn't.

 The sexiest thing in the English Patient was how director Anthony Minghella filmed the undulating, rippling desert. It made me to visit North Africa and I am urban to the core.

The relationship between Hungarian-born cartographer, Count Laszlo de Almasy and the married Katherine Blake takes off after weathering the mother of all desert sandstorms that leaves them temporarily entombed in their car. The couple's affair is supposed to be one of erotic obsession. It's not, unless you count doing it at the embassy Christmas party as violent passion. And as we all know, after a few cups of spiked punch, the same could happen at any Christmas party.

The movie details the affair as flashbacks the not-so-English patient has while dying of his injuries in an Italian monastery at the end of WWII.  The patient is cared for by his inexplicably devoted nurse, Hana (Juliette Binoche).

Thought they would get something going between them but it doesn't happen. Also staying at the monastery is an Allied spy (Willem Dafoe) from de Almasy's past who lost a couple of appendages (No, not those!) due to another's betrayal, and a couple of harmless British bomb experts. The transitions in the film seem disjointed and the scenes in the film's "present" are somewhat boring and it makes it somewhat difficult to get into the story at first.

The true greatness in this film (other than the sexily lean Rafe Fiennes) lies in its exploration and weighing of betrayal: to one's country, to one's friends, to one's spouse, to one's lover, and ultimately, to oneself.  The English Patient also asks that age-old question, what's in a name. Unlike Shakespeare, a name means a hell of a lot here.

The English Patient is a cerebral "chick flick" not the earthy romp as I and, I bet, the large number of guys in the audience expected (especially on the Sunday of the big Redskins - 49ers game). And as a "chick", I liked it.

As for a reason for the guys out there to go see the film (and it's long), is that it might get you some if you go willingly.