Truly Dreadful Film

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

"Ride with the Devil" was a major box office bomb when released in 1999. While not exactly a poor film, Ang Lee's well meaning but rather unentertaining Civil War epic doesn't seem to offer much flesh on the bones, despite starting intriguing enough, with a premise that promises much but fails to deliver later in the engagement factor.The film, based on James Schamus's screenplay on a nonfiction book, has an interesting slant on Civil War history, presenting the perspective of the Bushwhackers, of which the two principal leads are members of. However, after building up an engrossing start, the screenplay meanders into a romantic affair between Jack Bull Childs (Skeet Ulrich) and young widow Sue Lee Shelley (Jewel, in a quite admirably film debut). By the time the film depicts the Lawrence massacre, after some skirmishes and fights between the Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers, the movie begins to drag in an unnecessary romantic relationship between Shelley and Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), ending in a whimper rather than in a bang unlike most war epics.The film is more philosophical than most, and asks pertinent questions about racism, the nature and brutality of war and why and how it demonizes ordinary citizens. Yet three quarters into the film. the Lawrence massacre seems more like a standard trope scene in American war movies without presenting any fresh perspective, other than the rather generic "war always makes another man a bad guy". Ideally this sort of movie needs a Sam Fuller (or John Ford) to grab the audience by the collar or by the throat with visceral gutsiness; Ang Lee's film and screenplay seem too tame--well meaning though it is--and presents the Civil War with a tagged-on romance, a well executed but clearly a "cinematic" account of a war crime. It doesn't feel like the real thing, and doesn't convince.The performances all round is good, but Ang Lee's movie could gain with more in-your-gut visuals and quicker editing rather than narrative meanderings. I wish I could give this movie a higher rating but it is ultimately a little bland and unsatisfactory--perhaps more is required from this talented director and the scriptwriter team, which haven't seem to develop the screenplay sufficiently here to justify its two and half hours in the Director's Cut.

I saw parts of this on cable and thought, what are these young whippersnappers doing making a Civil War movie? Then I caught a few poignant scenes. This movie may be one of the most accurate movies in terms of dialog ever. If you have ever read 1700's-1900 books, you know, this is how they spoke. Stilted, wordy, over done, florid, yet with a touch of a Southern drawl to it. Some of the letters that are read you are sure they are real. Most important, what they say makes sense and the unusual way they phrase things is humorous and very entertaining, yet realistic. Not an easy thing to do. The young actors are brilliant. Tobey Maguire shows he is so much more than Spidey and Jewel is so natural you can't imagine she is acting. The whole cast is perfect.This movie has a few scenes in it that are all time greats. Not an easy thing to do as movies are now into their 100th year of being made. In fact, almost every scene is quotable. The authenticity of the dialog is matched by the battle scenes. It is guerrilla warfare, small scale and intensely close quartered. This movie doesn't miss on any level. The dialog scenes between the main characters is unforgettable and some of the best ever made in Hollywood's history. To mention one scene or another would be to disparage the other three dozen of them. If you want to see a lesser known movie, for no fault of it's own, that is perfect, see this movie. Great acting, action, dialog, and Ang Lee is one of the modern greats. He proves it with this jewel, total pun intended.

I was interested in "Ride with the Devil", because it promised to focus on one aspect of the American Civil War that hasn't been depicted a great deal of times in other Civil War movies, the Bushwackers who were independent of the Confederate army and who raided the north. But in the end, I found the movie to be greatly uneven. On the positive side, the movie feels authentic, from the props and costumes to the locations chosen. The acting by all the players is also professional and helps sell the characters the actors play. On the other hand, the screenplay misses some key moments that might have given the characters more detail. For instance, we see precious little of the hero before the incident that pushes him to be a raider, and then the movie skips a year ahead to show him in midstream. A bigger problem is that the movie is too long. While the movie never gets to the point of being boring, it seems to be taking its sweet time during many moments. The movie also ends at a point that kind of leaves its characters hanging; I would have liked to have seen a more definite resolution. This is not an awful movie, but it's greatly uneven, and I can understand why despite its strengths, the major Hollywood studio that bankrolled the movie in the end only gave it a limited theatrical release.

A Civil War epic about the Missouri-Kansas conflict. Tobey Maguire stars as a Dutch immigrant who joins the guerrilla side of the Bushwhackers (Confederates) against the Jayhawkers (Union). This film is beautifully produced, but not very engaging for much of its run. Maguire in the lead doesn't help at all. He can be a decent actor in the right circumstances, but he doesn't fit into the Civil War that well. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were both considered for the role, and Damon, in particular, would have been great in it (I think DiCaprio was still kind of a weak actor at the time, though he would have been better than Maguire). The film gets a bit better as it goes along, particularly when the main thrust of the story, the relationship between Maguire and a black man fighting on his side (Jeffrey Wright) emerges. Then there's the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, which is a fantastic and horrifying centerpiece. Wright gives a fine performance, but my favorite performance in the movie belongs to Simon Baker, who plays Wright's master. Yes, Jewel co-stars. She might be the reason that no one took this movie seriously when it first came out, but she's not half bad, really. The film is baity as Hell and even has a Jewel song during the end credits, over-ripe for Oscar glory.