November 24, 1999\u00a0|<\/strong>\u00a0Once you get past\u00a0Glory<\/em>,\u00a0Gone with the Wind<\/em>\u00a0and, arguably,\u00a0Gettysburg<\/em>, it\u2019s difficult to think of many first-rate movies about the Civil War.\u00a0Ride with the Devil<\/em>\u00a0may not rank as truly great cinema \u2013- it tries to cover too much ground, and lacks a consistently sharp focus – \u2013 but it\u2019s an ambitious and intelligent effort that is altogether worthy of inclusion on a very short list.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Directed with rousing vigor and meticulous precision by Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility<\/em>),\u00a0Ride with the Devil<\/em>\u00a0also earns points for taking a refreshingly unconventional approach to constructing a historical epic. Instead of focusing on massive military clashes \u2013 the attacks and counterattacks that take up so much time in more traditional Civil War stories \u2013 Lee and long-time screenwriter James Schamus get up-close and intimate in their vividly detailed adaptation of\u00a0Woe to Live On<\/em>, Daniel Woodrell\u2019s novel about the guerrilla warfare waged by pro-Southern Bushwhackers against Union sympathizers along the Kansas-Missouri border.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Taking a cue from\u00a0The Godfather<\/em>, Lee and Schamus begin with a lavish wedding sequence to provide exposition and introduce major characters. The year is 1861, the setting is a Missouri plantation — and the festive mood is tempered by anxious talk of \u201cYankee aggressors.\u201d (Most of that talk is of the flowery, contraction-free nature, and while it\u2019s historically accurate, it takes a little getting used to.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), the son of wealthy landowners, and Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), the Missouri-raised son of a German immigrant, are Southern gentlemen who wax eloquent while vowing to defend the Confederacy. Unfortunately, they quickly find themselves forced to back words with deeds. The childhood friends become comrades-in-arms when, shortly after the wedding, pro-Union Jayhawkers kill Jack\u2019s father.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Joining a small unit led by the stern Black John (James Caviezel of\u00a0The Thin Red Line<\/em>), Jack and Jake transform themselves into full-blown Bushwhackers. Unbound by formal rules of engagement, these guerrilla warriors are lethally efficient free-lancers who often don Union uniforms to trick \u2013 and, without mercy, kill \u2013 Union soldiers and sympathizers. Jake often is deeply troubled by the frequent savagery of his colleagues. But he remains loyal to the Confederacy \u2013 and, more important, to Jack \u2013 even after Union troops slaughter many of their cohorts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Jack and Jake join an odd couple of fellow Bushwhackers — George Clyde (Simon Baker), a dashing young Southern gentleman, and Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), George\u2019s former slave -\u2013 in seeking wintertime refuge at a secluded hillside dugout. Sue Lee (pop singer Jewel), a beautiful war widow, provides aid and comfort for the men. So much comfort, in fact, that Jack proceeds to woo the not-so-grieving widow. (\u201cFor three weeks\u201d she says of her dearly departed, \u201che was a good husband. But he didn\u2019t last.\u201d) When she turns up pregnant, though, it\u2019s up to Jake to do the right thing — whether he wants to or not \u2013- between bloody battles for a lost cause.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Lee evidences an impressive mastery of montage as he offers many horrifically thrilling scenes of hand-to-hand combat. The early Union assault on the Bushwhacker stronghold recalls a strikingly similar police raid on a motel hideout in\u00a0Bonnie and Clyde<\/em>.\u00a0 Later, just in time to provide a well-positioned moral turning point for Jake, William Quantrill\u2019s infamous 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas \u2013 which ended with 180 dead at the hands of Quantrill and his Bushwhackers \u2013 is recreated with stunning dramatic impact.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even more impressive, however, is the way Lee and Schamus deal with those elements of their period story that might offend contemporary sensibilities. To be blunt: Filmmakers tread on razor-thin ice whenever they romanticize Southern traditions \u2013 especially those traditions that involve slave ownership \u2013 while casting abolitionists as bad guys. (When the ice cracks, you\u2019re left with something as ludicrous as 1940\u2019s\u00a0Santa Fe Trail<\/em>, in which Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan fight anti-slavery zealots \u2013 including John Brown himself \u2013 while taking great pains to acknowledge that slavery itself isn\u2019t very nice.) Lee and Schamus do themselves proud by being at once honest and ambiguous, historically accurate and insightfully humane, while dealing sympathetically, but not uncritically, with the actions and attitudes of their central characters.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Oddly enough \u2013 and this is meant as an observation, not a criticism \u2013\u00a0Ride with the Devil<\/em>\u00a0resembles nothing so much as a World War II drama about idealistic young Germans who are bitterly disillusioned while enduring the amoral rigors of combat. That impression is repeatedly reinforced by Tobey Maguire\u2019s strong and subtle performance as Jake, a na\u00efve idealist whose coming of age under fire gradually emerges as the center of gravity for the movie.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In his scenes of romantic sparring with Jewel -\u2013 who is well cast and compelling in a key role -\u2013 Maguire conveys an engaging mix of pride, timidity and infatuation. But those interludes are just fleeting reminders of an irrecoverably lost innocence. Like too many other young men in too many other wars, Maguire\u2019s Jake Roedel sees too much, and grows up too fast. And somewhere along the way, he loses faith in the very things that made him go to war in the first place.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 24, 1999\u00a0|\u00a0Once you get past\u00a0Glory,\u00a0Gone with the Wind\u00a0and, arguably,\u00a0Gettysburg, it\u2019s difficult to think of many first-rate movies about the Civil War.\u00a0Ride with the Devil\u00a0may not rank as truly great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-8803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","tag-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movingpictureshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}