Rating: 
Summary: A triumph for an increasingly improving director
Review: Ang Lee's third major American studio film is arguably his best, where he treads onto a different period yet his all too familiar account of people in dramatic situations remains present. Tobey Maguire once again proves he is Hollywood's finest actor at the moment (and trust me, I am as serious as a heart attack when I say that) and Skeet Ulrich puts in another fine performance. Jewel was equal to the lead man and deserves all the kudos she gets for which is certainly an underrated performance. I won't nag on how this film deserved better than the reception it received in America (and Europe for that matter) and also won't go crazy how Ang Lee, for a second time was overlooked for an Oscar nomination for his flawless work. Just watch this film, and savour up the glorious 2 hours in entertainment it provides. Hands down, the best civil war film ever made.
Rating: 
Summary: Ang Lee's meditation on friendship during the Civil War
Review: 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 a movie about the Civil War any more than "Cold Mountain" is (an obvious comparison), but more about the friendships that take place during a war. It is just not clear that this is the central theme because our expectations are raised by more standard plot considerations (love and revenge) that do not get played out the way you would think. There is also a sense in which Roedel is the least interesting character of the bunch, yet he emerges as the central figure and the most important gun in the film is perhaps the one that is not fired.
Rating: 
Summary: Review This
Review: Director Ang Lee chose to follow up the excellent familial drama, The Ice Storm, with an epic Civil War film. The filmmakers put in much work to ensure that it was as historically accurate as possible. And on this end they did a wonderful job. Yet as a viewer of the film, with limited knowledge of Civil War history, many of the details seem false. Yes, there were black men who fought on the side of the South. It is true that there were many, intelligent, courageous, even good men who fought for the South as well. However, true these things are, my 21st century mind had difficulties believing them.
It goes against the grain of traditional Hollywood war, or even action, pictures. Our main characters are fighting on the losing, and wrong side. (Yes, there were many other factors contributing to the Civil War besides slavery, but this film does not get into them, and so neither shall my review.) We watch these characters commit many atrocities, including the murder of innocent people. Yet it also shows soldiers from the North commit similar atrocities. It seems more a film depicting the horrendous actions of coming-of-age men than any real declaration on the themes of the war itself.
There have been great movies made from the perspective of the wrong. These films show how even soldiers fighting on the wrong side of a war are still human. They have families, loved ones, hopes and dreams. If done well this type of film can show us the humanity in each person, and the atrocities of war. Yet in Ride with the Devil I never learned to care about any character. With few exceptions, the men we watch in this movie, are not sympathetic. Even the few with redeemable qualities are not given the space for us to care about their lives.
The story centers on a small community within the grand scale of the war. It takes place in Missouri, where literally brother fought against brother on both sides of the battle. Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) play friends who run off to join a gang of outlaws fighting on the side of the South. Here they meet George Clyde (Simon Baker) and a black man named Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright). Holt's reasons for fighting for the slave minded are only slightly revealed toward the end. Yet it is his relationship with the other three men that make up the central theme of the film. As each of these characters learns to trust and care for Holt, they must question the sense in fighting a war bent on keeping his fellow brothers enslaved. It is to Ang Lee's credit that he uses subtle hints to follow this theme rather than pounding it in with a sledge hammer. The characters change, and evolve, but in slow, slight movement that resemble real life rather than movie life. For even at the end of the pictures no one has made new resolves with life, or changed their beliefs drastically.
The action sequences, though well directed, still fall flat. Lee is unable to stir any real emotion out of the war's central motives or the intensity of its loss. It is when Lee focuses his attention of the relationships between his characters that this film succeeds. This is not surpassing when considering Lee's earlier films were small films focused on familial relationships. The bonds that grow between Roedel and Holt are moving. The love story between Sue Lee Shelley (a surprisingly good Jewel) and her suitors (to give names would be to give too much plot away) is also a treat. In Lee's next picture, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he found a way to entwine both beautiful action sequences and smaller, meaningful exchanges of love. Here, he seems to be still growing into this ability.
For Civil War buffs this film offers a reliable package of history. For the rest of us, it is a well made film that ultimately doesn't generate enough interest to really care.
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Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful, visually compelling movie
Review: This is a beautiful movie, set in a very complicated time in American history but dealing with a very simple thing: human nature. Granted, it requires a bit of an intellectual investment by the viewer, as do most of Lee's films; in fact, most movies really worth watching, and this is certainly one of them.
I found the dynamic between the Southern gentleman George Clyde (well played by Aussie Simon Baker) and his childhood friend, slave Holt (excellent Jeffrey Wright) who he had bought and freed especially poignant. The nuances of their complex and complicated relationship, which is full of mutual respect and love but at the same time cannot be removed from master-slave relationship thrust upon them by the time and place in which they live, were brilliantly done.
I particularly enjoyed (and appreciated the irony of) the scene where three Southern boys (two of whom are quite aristocratic in bearing and dress) are working hard digging into a hillside for their winter shelter, with one expounding how hard work was never his particular ambition in life, while the former slave lounges around on watch! It's small stuff like this that makes this film what it is, a brilliantly crafted snapshot of life, so raw, intense, real, moving, brutal, tragic and with such sense of periodic authenticity that it cannot but instantly transport you into the time and place. See this one, it's a gem!
Rating:
Summary: A Good Southern Revenge Movie.
Review: I believe this to be an accurate film on the Civil War as far as showing a hint of how the war wasn't really about slavery. But the Yankee Government trying to control the country and how they wanted to steal Southern land, money, and pride to turn the south into what it is today a [...]occupied Republic raped & pillaged by the Yankees for their own benefit and ruined for profit. The film showed how the Yankees started the fight but we Southerners are better at fighting' than they. the only thing that wasn't to accurate was the treatment of the Black fellow real Southerners don't and never acted like that towards the help we respected them just as much as they us. The Yankees would like you to believe that and so would the Liberal film industry but it is a lie slaves were treated well and they fought along side us because they wanted to, because they liked there way of life. There were also a lot of other nationalities that fought for the south like American Indians, Cubans, Jews, Irish, American Blacks, & American Mexicans. Because the Northern Yankees Had treated them badly in the past and the South was good to them and not a evil slave owning Republic like the South was made out to be, but a good Christian Republic that wanted to leave well enough alone... After all don't the winners always write History.
Rating:
Summary: It's Worth Seeing.
Review: I won't retell the story of this movie. Plenty of good info in earlier reivews to give you the story's flavor. I recall when the movie first hit theaters and didn't review well. So I skipped on it until it hit pay per view and wow...It's one of those movies that grabbed me and I still find much of it compelling from it's opening scene to its wonderful ending. I have had the great fortune to travel much of the area of central and west central Missouri that were the scene of the guerrilla phase of the Civil War in Missouri. Take a trip to Lexington, Glasgow, or Arrow Rock, Missouri and you'll find yourself on the set of this movie. Ang Lee's decision to film in Missouri and Kansas was the right one. The dialogue was wonderful and I think the movie does capture one of the seminal reasons that people fought for either side during the war...they did what their friends did. How many of us would have done the same.
I am certainly no film critic, but I loved this movie and I think you will too.
Rating:
Summary: Ang Lee dabbles in the American Civil War
Review: Ride with the Devil is set in border state Missouri during the Civil War. Because of the Missouri Compromise slavery has been allowed in the state, even though it is above the Mason-Dixon line (allowing slave-free Maine to enter the union at the same time.)
There are many inhabitants sympathetic to both the Union and to the Confederacy and both the "legitimate" government and armies and independent groups of fanatical guerilla bush-whackers alternately commit atrocities against those who oppose them.
Skeet Ulrich gets top billing as Jack Bull Chiles, who has been a Southern-sympathising friend of Tobey Maguire's Jake Roedel since childhood. Jake is the son of German immigrants and because of this (and the fact that he can read) he is looked at as an outsider by some of the other Bushwhackers. Simon Baker as George Clyde embodies his period role - he seems to be channeling George Custer and Buffalo Bill. George is accompanied by Jeffrey Wright as Daniel Holt, a black man who is seemingly out of place amongst the Southern Bushwhackers. The movie begins with him as a marginal character but by the end he is clearly one of the more important. The explanation for why a free black man would follow a group of Southern Loyalists makes sense and we see Holt grow in our eyes and the eyes of the other characters more than anyone in the film.
This group intermittently intermingles with Northern Troops and Southern Hotheads more whacko than themselves - especially Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the brutal killer Pitt Mackeson.
Jewel is cast as a love interest, and as an actress pulls off this part, but a more talented performer likely could have added a little depth to her role. I won't spoil anything by detailing her romantic attachments, but some of the fun of this movie is in "Southern Gentlemen" trying to maintain an air of respectability around a woman while a brutal war is being waged around them.
No genre is beyond the challenge of Mr. Lee. The Civil War. Crouching Tiger. Sense and Sensibility. The Hulk. The Ice Storm. I can't wait to see what's next from this talented top-tier director.
Rating:
Summary: Great Civil War Movie
Review: It's not too often that I read a great book, then see the movie and think the movie is as good. This was one of those rare cases. I loved the book, and the movie was outstanding too. Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich and Jewel all do a great job in this movie about the border war in Missouri and Kansas. It was one of those movies that didn't get much attention when it came out, which is a shame, because it was one of the best movies of the year.
Rating:
Summary: Jayhawkers Exposed
Review: Finally some balance to the border wars. Fiction, based on a composite of incidents, illustrating the failed attempt of a people to maintain their way of life in the face of German immigration and of vicious bandits posing as antislavery forces.
Rating:
Summary: The "Lost" Tobey Maguire Movie
Review: Despite the presence of Ang Lee at the helm, Ride with the Devil (1999) is something of an orphan. USA, the studio that produced the film, was going under at the time of its release, and so it had limited theatrical exposure; Universal subsequently picked up the DVD rights. While it's doubtful this movie would have been a box office smash, even with wider exposure, it's still worth viewing for its simply terrific cast. Many of the actors' profiles have risen significantly since 1999; in fact, probably the most recognizable "household name" in the cast back then was pop singer Jewel, trying her hand at acting.
Devil is set during the US Civil War--not among big, well-known battles, but in small, guerilla-like skirmishes waged between bands of Bushwackers (Confederate sympathizers) and Jayhawkers (Union loyalists) in the border states of Missouri and Kansas. But Devil is less concerned with the war itself than with the effects of war on the lives of ordinary people, in particular, the terrible toll it takes on the humanity of the men fighting it.
The story centers around a band of Bushwackers: affluent Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) joins the fighting after his father is killed by Jayhawkers; out of loyalty to Chiles, his best friend Jake Rodel (Tobey Maguire) joins up also. Rodel struggles to maintain a semblance of compassion amidst the carnage, which puts him at odds with some of the other men, in particular the ruthless, bloodthirsty Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers); because Rodel's father is a German immigrant and a Union supporter, many of the Bushwackers distrust him. Their company is led by 'Black' John Ambrose (James Caviezel) and the aristocratic George Clyde (Simon Baker). Clyde brings with him Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), a slave he freed; because Clyde bought his freedom, Holt remains loyal to his former master and fights for the Confederate cause. Not surprisingly, he's derided and belittled, distrusted even more than Rodel.
Chiles, Rodel, Clyde, and Holt are thrown together in close confinement as they bunk down for the winter. Chiles begins a romance with Sue Lee Shelley (Jewel), a young widow whose family is sheltering the men; Holt and Rodel become cautious friends, a bond formed partly because of their mutual status as outsiders. Their refuge is shattered by a skirmish that ends disastrously, and once back among the other Bushwackers, Holt and Rodel visibly begin to doubt the wisdom of continuing a campaign whose purpose has become so muddled. Their ethical conflict reaches a crisis point during a brutal Bushwacker raid on the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas, after which they must decide for themselves where their honor lies.
Devil is a handsome, thought-provoking film; unfortunately, it never quite seems to achieve emotional lift-off. Lee's directing style may have something to do with this: the battle scenes are filmed extremely well, but with a weird detachment--they're cerebral, when they really need to be visceral. The raid on the largely defenseless Kansas town is plainly horrific, and yet the sequence doesn't get under the viewer's skin the way it needs to; it's dispassionate rather than disturbing. The only place where Lee achieves powerful immediacy is a scene involving a gruesome amputation; a lot of other scenes could have used this kind of urgency.
To his credit, Lee wisely refrains from taking sides in the war: north and south are shown as equally capable of both mercy and barbarity. Apart from a couple of musings about the power of education and the value of individual liberty, the film mostly avoids the trap of PC soapboxing. Lee also refrains from waxing sentimental: the biggest emotional scenes are nicely underplayed-perhaps too underplayed; in his efforts to sidestep treacle, he instead verges on dry and academic. Nevertheless, he does achieve some very effective moments--a running thread involving a pilfered bag of Union mail finds its mark perfectly, as does a slyly romantic interlude near the film's end.
The strength of the movie lies in the uniformly excellent performances of its cast. Ulrich, the nominal lead, is solid and engaging as Chiles, but because the character has few inner conflicts, he's not as interesting as Rodel, whose growth has a better defined arc. Maguire is nothing short of wonderful, wholly believable as he takes Rodel from innocence to disillusionment to maturity and wisdom; he effectively conveys the contradictions of a young man, who for example, is a proficient killer but sexually almost completely ignorant.
Similarly strong is Wright. Far from a token minority, Holt is an integral part of the film--he starts out on the periphery of the cast and becomes more central as the plot unfolds. By the time the movie ends, Holt has changed so subtly but so thoroughly that he's almost a different person. Rhys-Meyers is also terrific; his Mackeson is despicable, but the actor gives him small touches of depth, especially in depicting Mackeson's spiral down into suicidal despair.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the cast is Jewel, warmly expressive and natural in her acting debut. She's somewhat awkward in spots, but otherwise very solid, with a nice, easy screen presence--her work in the last thirty minutes or so is particularly good. Granted, Sue Lee is hardly a demanding role, but Jewel makes her imminently likable; she doesn't overdo anything, and she exhibits nice chemistry with the other actors. The rest of the cast is rounded out with a lot of small, excellent performances: Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson are particularly good; John Ales is very strong as William Quantrill, the man who provokes the raid on Lawrence.
Devil's biggest fault is that, for a war movie, it lacks sweep and energy. All the ingredients are here for a knockout film--good story, great cast, skilled director, beautiful cinematography--and yet the story unfolds at pretty much the same pitch from beginning to end, never quite achieving the highs it needs for lasting impact. An utterly unmemorable score doesn't help: apart from some traditional folk music, it's as bland and generic as canned peas, and it does nothing to enhance the film's power. Some viewers may find Devil too dry, but certainly it's worth catching to see so many gifted actors on the verge of greatness. Tobey Maguire fans in particular should not miss it.
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