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Ride With The Devil | Year: 1999 Classification: Action/Adventure Actors/Actresses: - James Caviezel - Skeet Ulrich - Tobey Maguire - Jewel Kilcher The Civil War in different trenches Ride with the Devil is a wonderful and sometimes painful telling of a brutal theater of the Civil War. It was in the border states before and during the war that many outlaws were made -- the James brothers, Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, and many others. Very rarely are they shown within the context of that war. Here is told the violence of the massacre of Lawrence, Kansas, and the brutality of Union forces in the state of Missouri. The story centers around four young men (Tobey Maguire as Jake Roedel; Jack Bull Chiles played by Skeet Ulrich; George Clyde played by Simon Baker; and his former slave Holt played by Jeffrey Wright) who are forced to fight for their land and their lives against Union forces. Along the way they meet a young widow, Sue Lee Shelley, played by Jewel. Joining up with William Clarke Quantrill, the young men learn the horrors of war and the price it often extracts. The battle scenes are intense and well done. It might be said that the story is shallow. However, a better observation might be that, except for the action, the rest of the movie is downplayed, making the characters seem more human, more real than if they were played larger than life. It is a simple story of ordinary people living their lives in the center of a chaos over which they have no control. People who enjoy this movie might also enjoy Gettysburg or The Red Badge of Courage (both book and movie). Seeing such a movie might also lead to reading nonfiction books about the border states that played an important part in the war. What a ride. Civil War epic involving the confused guerilla warfare that happened along the Missouri-Kansas border. We learn that this region wasn't exactly teeming with regular armies, but rather was the scene of isolated groups waging local war: Confederate sympathizers were "Bushwackers"; Unionists were "Jayhawkers". *Ride with the Devil* is another brilliant example of the seemingly endless fund of storytelling material about the Civil War that has yet to be fully tapped. With such an advantage, the movie is bound to excite attention. What keeps that attention is the brilliant pacing of the narrative and Ang Lee's deft direction. These young men on the run, hardened beyond their years, enjoined with a very bad cause to start with, experience loss after loss and yet grow immeasurably within, particularly Tobey Maguire's Rodell and Jeffrey Wright's magnificent renegade slave, Holt. (Both Maguire and Wright perform superbly.) I don't know how Ang Lee pulls it off, but we watch Maguire's character harden, toughen, and mature most subtly, without fanfare-of-trumpets setpieces that beat us over the head (e.g., Gibson's *Patriot*.) It's a shock when, late in the film, Rodell gets a haircut that reveals how young he actually is. Quite simply, I cannot praise this movie enough. How on earth *Ride with the Devil* got so thoroughly snubbed by the industry, audiences, and critics is beyond me. The critics, in particular, took a total bath on this one. Perhaps the world wasn't quite ready for Ang Lee's brand of intelligent action pictures. Hopefully, with the groundbreaking success of *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon*, folks will see Mr. Lee's name on this movie's DVD box and give it a rent. Hopefully, so will you -- you won't regret it. This movie's great. Ang Lee's meditation on friendship during the Civil War Missouri was one of the slave states that was kept in the Union during the Civil War and since it was on the far side of the Mississippi River it was not really part of the Western Theater of the war. As the critical part of the Anaconda Plan the Union armies were seeking control of the Mississippi, which explained why Grant was fighting his way from Tennessee to Vicksburg while Farragut took New Orleans. In fact, there really was not an organized Confederate army in Missouri, which explains why the young Southern men in "Ride with the Devil" join the Irregulars, who waged guerrilla warfare against Union loyalists. In this part of the war we do not talk about great battles, but rather the infamous raid that torched Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863 as Quantrill's raiders murdered the pro-Union jayhawks. The story here focus on six young men who join the bushwackers: Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), a first generation American who wants to be considered as much a Southerner as any one else even though his father can from Germany (which means he is called "Dutchy"); Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), who hates the Yankees and has seen his family killed; George Clyde (Simon Baker-Denny), a gentleman fighting to preserve a way of life that is going to be gone with the wind; Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), an ex-slave who fights besides Clyde because the man freed him; Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who is a sadist who glories in killing; and Black John (James Caviezel), almost as brutal but more driven by anger and revenge. The idea in "Ride with the Devil" is that when America went to war with itself in 1861 the young boys growing up in Missouri and Kansas were suddenly forced into a less than honorable manhood overnight. Consequently, one of the first casualties of the war was their innocence. In 1987 Missouri-born author Daniel Woodrell wrote his Civil War-era novel "Woe to Live On." For Ang Lee the appeal was the drama of young people coming of age in the worst possible time in American history and the theme of self-emancipation. The principal actors were put through three weeks of "boot camp" to capture the way the war dehumanized the young men forced to fight it. This film start out focusing on the friendship between Jake and Bull as much as it is on anything else, but then while hiding out from the Yankees during the winter Bull takes a liking to Sue Lee Shelly (Jewel), a young widow woman who is helping to provide them with food. Having lost both his father and his best friend, Jake continues to fight because that is what he is supposed to be doing and starts to connect with two other characters in ways that will eventually change his life. After the Lawrence Raid it is clear that the war is going to be lost and a young man who has not even seen twenty years realizes he is lost as well. Certainly "Ride with the Devil" is a beautiful film with the sense of period authenticity you would expect from Lee. It is not really Buy Ride With The Devil at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Ride With The Devil Search with the Priority Search Engine on Ride With The Devil This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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