Ang Lee gets around! "Sense and Sensibility" in Georgian England "The Ice Storm" in suburban America of the 1970s, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Q'ing-Dynasty China, "Brokeback Mountain" in 1960s' Wyoming. For the 1999 "Ride with the Devil, " Lee's usual scenarist James Schamus adapted Daniel Woodrell's blood-soaked novel Woe to Live On. The novel and the screen adaptation focus on the guerrilla warfare that continuously flared up between the Bushwhackers (Southern sympathizers) and the Jayhawkers (irregulars in favor of the North) in Missouri and Kansas during the time of the American Civil War (1860-65).

Tobey Maguire (pre-Spider Man) — with his deep-voice, seeming affectlessness, but soulful, bulging eyes above very thin lips, and at the age of 24 still able to pass for 18—portrayed the central character, Jake Roedel, whose German immigrant father is a Union supporter. This makes his Southern friends Jack (Skeet Ulrich), George (Simon Baker), and their associate Pitt (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) doubt his loyalty. The stablest character is a (former?) slave named Holt, played by Jeffrey Wright (who played Basquiat for Julian Schnabel Peoples in Shaft, and reaped many awards for playing Belize in "Angels in America" on stage and in Mike Nichols's miniseries of it). Jewel plays Sue Lee, a war widow, who takes up with more than one of the main characters over the course of the movie.

Jake demonstrates his loyalty to his friends after Jack's father is murdered by Northern (Union) soldiers. At the start, Jake is contemptuous of Holt and offended to have a slave fighting with the noble Confederate irregulars, but — as in many Korean war movies — the young white racist learns to appreciate the humanity (nay: nobility) of the resourceful (trustworthy, loyal, helpful...) black man — who saves his life more than once. Jake matures (emotionally rather than physically) over the course of the movie.

The acting (of everyone, including pop singer Jewel) and Frederick Elmes's wide-screen cinematography (that, when I saw it in a multiplex theater, seemed to reach into next door) in the movie are superb. Shot on location, the plains look especially vast, particularly when characters head west at the end.

The film looks stunning in pretty much every frame. The period detail is meticulous (including the flowing hair of the white men). The high-falutin' (Old Testament) diction takes some getting used to, but succeeds in emphasizing the antiquity of the goings-on and some of the attitudes. Lee seems fascinated by snow (something he obviously did not grow up with, though snow falls in the mountains of inland, subtropical Taiwan). The music is generic heroic movie music.

As the film slowly unfolds, Lee increasingly stresses the pointlessness of the Bushwackers' campaign. All they accomplish is killing (and being hunted down and killed themselves), which some of them slowly come to realize amidst the excesses to which some men (especially Pitt Mackeson (Rhys Meyers from "Velvet Goldmine"), a sadistic psychopath, and Black John (James Caviezel, who went on to "The Thin Red Line" and "The Passion of Jesus Christ") go, ostensibly in the name of a "sacred" cause. ("Sacred causes" are frequent excuses for bloodletting, in our day as in the mind-19th century). Still, for most of the "irregulars" in "Ride with the Devil, " war is personal, not politically or ideologically motivated.

The film climaxes with the senseless violence of the "raid" (massacre) by William Quantrill's Raiders on Lawrence, Kansas, and then shifts to a quiet romance (though one final confrontation looms and eventually comes and goes). The romance movie supplants if not entirely overcomes the movie about savage guerrilla warfare.

The structure is less than smooth. The movie starts slowly and runs 138 minutes, lurching in ways that suggest that it was probably cut down from an even longer running time. It has an unnervingly wide range of characters (including more than one devil; in that Quantrill [John Ales] is not onscreen much, it seems to me that the title should be "with devils"...).

The proceedings may meander, but there is a strong viewpoint about the hellishness of war, particularly civil war pitting relatives against each other for nebulous and relatively abstract commitments ("preserving the Union" vs. "preserving our way of life" in the form of slavery that is not economically viable away from the cotton fields of the Deep South). Jeffrey Wright does a lot with his part, but was given few lines with which to do his magic. Jake's growing up is also underwritten, though going in directions the audience will sympathize with and be less likely to question how he gets from stage to stage in his maturation.

The DVD extras are pallid: a music video for Jewel's song "What's Simple Is True," some production notes (abridged from those on the movie's website), a 30-second tv trailer for the movie and three trailers for obscure other movies (Far And Away, a remake of All Quiet On The Western Front, and Reap The Wild Wind). "Ride with the Devil" is an excellent movie that cries out for extras explicating the history surrounding the story, and Ang Lee's commentary tracks with James Schamus rewarding on "Crouching Tiger," and regret that there is none for the "Ride with the Devil" DVD. Still, the video transfer is the most important component and it is more than fine.

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This revision/expansion of my third epinion was (perhaps inadvertently) prompted by AnderClayton. Movie epinions have become more expanisive over the years (which is not always good!), and I thought that elaborating this one (and removing what someone considered "plot spoiling" for which he NHed the review with a sarcastic comment—the first comment on any of my epinions that I ever received...) was justified, particularly since I think the movie was badly marketed and deserves a larger audience. Admittedly, the movie requires patience, and being able to deal with graphic violence, sadistic characters, and a blurring of the romance and war-movie genres.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD