Ride with the Devil (1999)

Undescribable Perfection

Fantastic!

A different way of telling a story

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The title "Ride With The Devil" sounds like it would be a pretty scary movie eh? The only scary part was how brutally violent the flick was. The movie is able to find the right mix of action and emotion. Having said that, it is hard to classify what genre this is. Western? Drama? Action? Just as a scene is build-up with action, it switches to being dramatic. You may also feel a bit cheated at the end. The key words are "a bit." The constant changes are done so well with such good acting and such a good script, you really don't care. Hence the key words "a bit."During the Civil War, two lifelong friends (Maguire, Ulrich) bear witness to their family being killed by Union soldiers. They join a group of rebels known as the Bushwackers that fight then hide. A beautiful young woman (Jewel) comes to their aide and becomes lovers with Ulrich. When Ulrich dies, Maguire takes her to a home and has second thoughts about fighting for his life.Maguire leads a star-studded cast that sparks interest. The action makes the movie fun. The deep character development and dialogue make the movie unforgettable.

I've seen this movie several times. I've read a few books about William Quantrill, so the movie interested me. And while Quantrill's character is a small part of the movie, I thought it was a very good period piece filled with rich dialog that seemed to be of the time. The friendship between the characters Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich play cements the story. This is the first movie I saw Jeffrey Wright in, and his performance as the willfully loyal Holt is first-rate, probably the best acting in the movie. My favorite scene is at the end of the movie when Jake Roedel and Holt part ways. It's a bittersweet moment that didn't much dialog.

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.

This movie is about a group of Confederate Bushwhackers, guerrillas who were independently organized into groups of small bands, and the band shown is this movie is made up of friends Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), wealthy farmer George Clyde (Simon Baker of The Mentalist), and freed slave Daniel Holt (Jeffery Wright). Their band has a less friendly relationship with other Confederate bands due to Jake's German ancestry, his father had been a staunch abolitionist who served in the Union Army and most other German Missourians were abolitionists, and the inclusion of a former slave. They're given food and shelter by sympathetic local farmers and a young war widow, Sue Shelley (Jewel Kilcher), catches Jack's eye becoming his lover and pregnant with his child. During a brutal retaliatory action after Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas, Jack is injured and eventually dies. Jake and Daniel take Sue and flee Missouri eventually making their way West.This is a brutal disturbing movie about a previously untold, on film at least, part of the American Civil War where your enemy may have lived as far as the next farm. You couldn't be sure who were your friends were sometimes and the wrong beliefs may have gotten you lynched. It's easy to see that the Jake Roedel's character doesn't believe in the institution of slavery but rather the principles of freedom and independence. He goes along with the Bushwackers against his dad's wishes due to so many of his friends taking up their cause. His life changes and not all for the good with the choices he makes, but by the end he's made peace with the man he was and now is.