Ride with the Devil (1999)

Thanks for the memories!

Load of rubbish!!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

There is a line from Eric Bana in "Blackhawk Down": Once the first bullet gets fired, politics is out the window. This film is a remarkable achievement, but the beginning was a little iffy. I don't know if they filmed it in sequence but the dialogue in the beginning was a little too stiff and archiac. They steer away from it as the movie goes on. Perhaps the actors had to find their characters, the cast is quite young.Ang Lee did something incredible: He made an American Civil War kitchen sink drama, with 3 big action sequences that are exceptionally well staged and edited.I didn't have a problem with Jeffrey Wrights character. If anything, he brought realism to the flick, real life is messy and not as easy as black and white, good and evil. Sometimes you are where you are.As with all Ang Lee films, I appreciate how he lets things breathe. A few seconds of the camera lingering on nature, that's one of his trademarks. He always manages to capture beautiful contrast.

Harrowing epic about a little known band of civil war fighter known as the "bushwhackers" who used guerrilla warfare to destroy Yankee targets. It follows Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles who are friends in Missouri when the Civil War starts. When Jack's dad is killed by Union soldiers the young men join the Bushwhackers, irregulars loyal to the South.I liked this quite a bit, a part of American history that I knew nothing about. Episodic in its telling, I felt that this told the true story, as there weren't any real heroes here.Excellent battle scenes filled with hundreds of extras and great horse stunts. Well acted too with a huge (mostly unrecognizable) cast due to all the wigs and period costumes. Tobey Maguire is really good as is Jonathon Rhys Meyers, whose wild, long haired character stole every scene he was in. The romance was okay, overall it did waffle in parts, with long sections of character development followed by another legendary, bloody battle. Not many left alive by the end but I liked how this played out. 5/11/14

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.