Ride With the Devil

Ang Lee scores a home run with his Civil War epic Ride With the Devil (1999). This adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's Woe to Live On received middling reviews and a cold audience reception, but it's close behind Glory as one of Hollywood's best takes on the War Between the States.

Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) is the son of a German immigrant in 1860 Missouri, where a brutal guerilla war between pro-slavery Bushwhackers and free-soil Jayhawkers is spilling over from Kansas Territory. After Roedel's friend Jack Bull (Skeet Ulrich) loses his father to the Jayhawkers, Jake, Jack and hot-head Pitt (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) join a Bushwhacker gang led by George Clyde (Simon Baker) and his ex-slave Holt (Jeffrey Wright). The border war escalates into even further violence, as Clyde's gang joins up with the murderous William Quantrill (John Ales) in his sack of Lawrence, Kansas. Jake's German ancestry and friendship with Holt leads to a rivalry with Pitt, and a romance with widow Sue Lee (Jewel) further complicates things.

Ride With the Devil deals with a largely forgotten chapter of the Civil War. Hostilities had been raging in "Bleeding Kansas" since 1854, long before Ft. Sumter, giving rise to infamous killers like John Brown, Jim Lane, Bloody Bill Anderson and Will Quantrill. Missouri's plentiful German population sided with the Federal government, while slave-owners supported the Confederacy, and the Civil War took on a particularly brutal edge in that region. This lawless, internicine conflict generated atrocities on both sides, its legacy a generation of lingering hatred and criminals like Jesse James and Cole Younger.

A handful of films have addressed this brutal conflict. Dark Command, an early John Wayne vehicle, sees the Duke as a Jayhawker matching wits with Walter Pidgeon's Quantrill in the streets of Lawrence. Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales survives the conflict to continue a private war against the Unionist "Red Legs" who killed his family. And of course, there have been an slew of Jesse James films. Ride With the Devil, however, easily best these other accounts.

Ride With the Devil is a tapestry of moral ambiguity. The film's brutal brush warfare is far removed from the romanticized, heroic portrayals of Gone With the Wind and Gettysburg. There's little sense of ideology, whether states rights or slavery, in this conflict, with everyone drawn into the vortex of slaughter. Both sides commit atrocities, and those caught in the middle are subject: each of the protagonists loses a family member to the Jayhawkers, and don't bat an eye at gunning down unarmed men and boys at every opportunity. The film wonderfully humanizes its mostly-unseen Union soldiers through captured letters, providing welcome warmth that only emphasizes the war's cruelty.

Writer James Schamus's sensitive characterizations add to the complexity. Jake's dilemma is poignantly rendered: distrusted because of his German ancestry, he finds even his family isn't safe from Jayhawk depredation. The most interesting character is Holt, whose devotion to Clyde is unconditional - and who bitterly resents having his "freedom" subject to another man's whims. The film mostly avoids convention, with its mature treatment of its romance and resolving its central character conflict in an unexpected way.

Ang Lee's Hollywood work is hit or miss, but Ride With the Devil is some of his best work. The film is beautifully shot by Frederick Elmes, mixing gorgeous photography with brutally intense action scenes (and Mychael Danna's wonderful score). Curiously, what should be the film's centerpiece - Quantrill's raid on Lawrence - is a damp squib, filmed in a sterile and rushed fashion atypical of the rest of the film.

Skeet Ulrich was the biggest name at the time, but his star was ultimately outshone by co-stars Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man), James Caviezel (Wyatt Earp) and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (The Tudors). Maguire has never been better than his measured performance, mixing righteous anger with moral uncertainty. Rhys-Meyers plays a bit over-the-top but Ulrich and Caviezel score by underplaying their characters. Singer Jewel's strong performance provides the story's emotional rock. Jeffrey Wright (Quantum of Solace) gives a layered, sensitive portrayal of a truly unique character. Familiar faces like Tom Wilkinson (Valkyrie), Simon Baker (TV's The Mentalist) and Mark Ruffalo (Shutter Island) turn up in bit parts.

Ride With the Devil isn't perfect, but it's definitely one of the better Civil War films available.