Cheap Ride with the Devil (DVD) (Skeet Ulrich, Tobey Maguire, Jewel Kilcher) (Ang Lee) Price
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The Civil War of battlefields and plantation houses is nowhere to be seen here. Instead we see the war as an improvised and largely blundering but very bloody feud among neighbors in the border state of Missouri. In this bucolic war zone--more than a little reminiscent of the Balkans in the late 1990s--the Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility) traces the destinies of several young Southern bushwhackers (guerrilla fighters) as they experience violence, the seasons, and different kinds of love. Skeet Ulrich draws the aristocratic glamour role (and top billing), but he's overshadowed by Tobey Maguire as a first-generation American, the magnificent Jeffrey Wright (a shameful oversight at Oscar time) as a freed slave fighting beside his former master, and singer Jewel in a very natural acting debut as the young widow who graces all their lives. The title The Birth of a Nation was already taken, but by the end of this movie you feel it would have applied here. -- Richard T. Jameson
| ACTORS: | Skeet Ulrich, Tobey Maguire, Jewel Kilcher |
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| DIRECTOR: | Ang Lee |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 01 January, 1999 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Universal Studios |
| MPAA RATING: | R (Restricted) |
| FEATURES: | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby |
| TYPE: | Feature Film-action/Adventure |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 025192077425 |
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Customer Reviews of Ride with the Devil
An Astounding movie wich was shamfully overlooked! Ride with the Devil is a civil war drama about the kansas/Missuori buskwackers. It is one of the few movies which takes you into its period world so effortlessly. It shows the true violence of the time and yet shows how that violence affected people and changed their lives. Ride with the Devil was directed by Ang Lee, who brought us the brilliant Sense and Sensibility, this is his best work since Sense and Sensibility. Lee knows how to make a period drama come alive to the viewer in a way that few directors can do. Maybe its because he usually does projects he really feels for. The acting in Ride with the Devil was supuerb. Tobey Maguire again proves that he is the most talented young actor in Hollywood, today. He protrays a a first generation american,Jake Rodell, with such heart and sincerity, very few actors could have done that. Skeet Ulrich delivers his best and most seriuos performance to date, as Jack Bull. Singer, Jewel, gives a suprisingly good and nuanced performance as Sue Lee Shelley. Jefferey Wright, protrays a freed black with real integrity and authority. Wright and Maguire were horrible oversights at the Oscars. Actually, i thought the whole movie was a horrible oversight. They brought a whole differnet level to this movie with their performances. they made you see their characters in a way that few could have done. You truely cared what happened to them as if they were a close freind. Wright and Maguire made you see the Civil War not as north and south but as people defending the only life they had ever known. Ride with the Devil is a captivating movie that goes right to your heart and helps you to understand a time in America's history, when nothing was simple and everything was a battle--Freedom, your way of life and survival. it puts a new persepective on a war with split our nation in two and hurt everyone it touched. this movie will probably never get a big following but for those of you reading this you will not be disapointed. so go rent this movie or be like me and buy it. thank you Ang lee and everyone how helped make this magnificent movie!
Outstanding depiction of the Border War
Being someone that has grown up in Kansas City knowing that this is the only area in which the Civil War was fought where there are no statues or memorials to either side, it was very exciting that Hollywood finally made a movie which acurately depicts how it was here along the Kansas and Missouri border during the border war of the Civil War years. Tobey Maguire is excellent as a German immigrant's son who is swept up in the Missouri "bushwhacker" cause in the border war against the "jayhawkers" headquarted in Lawrence, Kansas, a town founded by Massachusetts abolitionists. The supporting cast is good as well, especially Jeffrey Wright who is spectacular as a slave fighting with the bushwhackers. The Academy made a huge error overlooking him at Oscar time. This film was released only in Kansas City, Los Angeles and New York. This is as good as Ang Lee's other films and why it was not given a general release is a mystery. But not to worry, now you can enjoy it in the peace of your own home. Check it out, you won't be disappointed!
Ang Lee's meditation on friendship during the Civil War
Missouri was one of the slave states that was kept in the Union during the Civil War and since it was on the far side of the Mississippi River it was not really part of the Western Theater of the war. As the critical part of the Anaconda Plan the Union armies were seeking control of the Mississippi, which explained why Grant was fighting his way from Tennessee to Vicksburg while Farragut took New Orleans. In fact, there really was not an organized Confederate army in Missouri, which explains why the young Southern men in "Ride with the Devil" join the Irregulars, who waged guerrilla warfare against Union loyalists. In this part of the war we do not talk about great battles, but rather the infamous raid that torched Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863 as Quantrill's raiders murdered the pro-Union jayhawks.
The story here focus on six young men who join the bushwackers: Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire), a first generation American who wants to be considered as much a Southerner as any one else even though his father can from Germany (which means he is called "Dutchy"); Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), who hates the Yankees and has seen his family killed; George Clyde (Simon Baker-Denny), a gentleman fighting to preserve a way of life that is going to be gone with the wind; Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), an ex-slave who fights besides Clyde because the man freed him; Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who is a sadist who glories in killing; and Black John (James Caviezel), almost as brutal but more driven by anger and revenge.
The idea in "Ride with the Devil" is that when America went to war with itself in 1861 the young boys growing up in Missouri and Kansas were suddenly forced into a less than honorable manhood overnight. Consequently, one of the first casualties of the war was their innocence. In 1987 Missouri-born author Daniel Woodrell wrote his Civil War-era novel "Woe to Live On." For Ang Lee the appeal was the drama of young people coming of age in the worst possible time in American history and the theme of self-emancipation. The principal actors were put through three weeks of "boot camp" to capture the way the war dehumanized the young men forced to fight it.
This film start out focusing on the friendship between Jake and Bull as much as it is on anything else, but then while hiding out from the Yankees during the winter Bull takes a liking to Sue Lee Shelly (Jewel), a young widow woman who is helping to provide them with food. Having lost both his father and his best friend, Jake continues to fight because that is what he is supposed to be doing and starts to connect with two other characters in ways that will eventually change his life. After the Lawrence Raid it is clear that the war is going to be lost and a young man who has not even seen twenty years realizes he is lost as well.
Certainly "Ride with the Devil" is a beautiful film with the sense of period authenticity you would expect from Lee. It is not really a movie about the Civil War any more than "Cold Mountain" is (an obvious comparison), but more about the friendships that take place during a war. It is just not clear that this is the central theme because our expectations are raised by more standard plot considerations (love and revenge) that do not get played out the way you would think. There is also a sense in which Roedel is the least interesting character of the bunch, yet he emerges as the central figure and the most important gun in the film is perhaps the one that is not fired.