Summary:
Two friends join a band of Confederate guerilla fighters known as the Bushwackers.
My Thoughts:
Ang Lee’s “Ride with the Devil” is a good movie for a while, but by the middle of the second act it becomes a bit of a slough to get through. The film is speckled with graphic battle sequences and interesting moral dilemmas, but the script wasn’t tight enough to make me care about some of the situations our protagonist was facing. To make matters worse, it’s difficult to sympathize with our protagonist because he’s fighting for the Confederates, and though he has a friend whom is black (undoubtedly to ease our misgivings about rooting for him), I still couldn’t bring myself to cheer on Jake Roedel (Tobey McGuire, “Spider-Man (2002)”) as he burned union stores and was party to massacre.
“Don’t Think You Are A Good Man. The Thought Will Spoil You.”
During the American civil war, friends Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich, “Scream”) join a Confederate guerilla group known as the Bushwhackers. While they are there, they encounter a number of individuals whom have different opinions and outlooks on the war and how it will go, including Black John (Jim Caviezel, “The Passion of the Christ”), Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, “Mission Impossible III”), and African American Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright, “Hold the Dark”). As the friends fight and kill in the name of the confederacy, they come across a few sympathizers, including Sue Lee Shelley (Jewel Kilcher, “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”).
So, there are some pretty great things about this movie, first of which is the production design. There are battle sequences with dozens of extras, all of them costumed beautifully, some riding horses and firing pistols, others firing muskets from trenches. There are a few scenes that take place in towns, and there we see beautiful sets and more costumed extras. The cinematography is wonderful, capturing wide sweeping plains, undulating hills, and snowy countryside; as a whole, this film is undeniably gorgeous.
The action is also pretty impressive, and pretty gory too. I honestly wasn’t expecting some of the battle sequences to be as brutal as they were. They’re fast-paced, bloody, and pretty well done. I haven’t seen Ang Lee do action before this movie (though I honestly can’t wait to see the horribly-reviewed “Gemini Man”), but I thought he really did the action sequences justice.
The biggest problem with this film is the length, and part of that, I’m sure, is because I watched the director’s cut, which is about ten minutes longer. There’s just a lot of downtime where it doesn’t really feel like a lot is going on, particularly in the second act of the film when Jake and co hang out in an abandoned mine shaft for quite a while. The film just plods on, not really addressing any meaningful themes or furthering the plot in any way.
Another major problem this film has is that Toby McGuire can’t really sell some of the more emotional moments. I have no problem with McGuire- I think he made a great Spider-Man, and he’s had a couple other roles where I really think he shown through (the miniseries “The Spoils of Babylon” is absolutely hilarious if you haven’t seen that, and his appearance in “Fear and Loathing” never fails to make me laugh). This role was not one of his better ones. I just felt like he never really embodied Jake’s character; he never disappeared into it. I just felt like I was watching Toby McGuire try out a southern accent; sometimes he succeeded, and other times I laughed at him. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, on the other hand, was nigh unwatchable at times; there’s a scene where he tosses his hair over his shoulder after removing a hat, and immediately I thought of Prince Charming in “Shrek II”, when he takes off his helmet and then his hairnet in slow motion. Meyers just looks like a pretty-boy playing cowboy dress up; there was no way in hell I could take him seriously as the malicious character he was meant to play.
Verdict:
Overall, “Ride with the Devil” is a middling film that has a few moments of greatness (some of those battle sequences are stellar). I wish the script had another draft, maybe just to flush out the muddled themes a bit more; I wish the acting were a bit better; and I wish the film was thirty minutes shorter. But, wishing on something doesn’t make it better: this film is okay, and that’s about all I can say.
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