Ride with the
Devil
www.ride-with-the-devil.com
Rated R
Opens Friday, Dec. 17
It's always commendable when directors tackle genres that
seem outside their realm of expertise. Ang Lee, director of
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and the flawed
but moving domestic drama The Ice Storm, is this type
of filmmaker. The Taiwanese-born Lee has been lauded by critics
for his outsider takes on traditional Western period pieces,
as if his Eastern roots enable him to see things differently
within these established genres. This is arguably true, but
Lee's reputation may suffer after his newest film, Ride
with the Devil--a Civil War epic that admirably strives
to explore areas untouched by most films about Blue vs. Gray
but that eventually does little with its potentially fascinating
examination.
An ambitious film, Ride with the Devil is not a
gushingly PC look at the war between the states but rather
a more complex take on the Southern-sympathizing Missouri
Bushwhackers and the abolitionist Kansas Jayhawkers. Told
from the Bushwhacker point of view (again, unusual), the
movie follows the exploits of four men--Jake Roedel (Tobey
Maguire), Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), George Clyde
(Simon Baker-Denny), and Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), all
members of the "Missouri Irregulars," a guerrilla group
fighting against Union loyalists. Burning down and massacring
entire towns (except for women and children--these are Southern
gentlemen, after all), the Bushwhackers may appear to be
marauding sociopaths, but in such a difficult period of
American history they're portrayed more as confused kids.
The movie presents much of the killing as personally rather
than politically motivated. Although a Lincoln sympathizer,
Roedel fights out of loyalty to the Confederacy because
Unionists murdered his loved ones. Holt, an ex-slave, fights
on the side of his masters out of allegiance to Clyde, who
purchased but then freed him.
As in the harsh conditions of The Ice Storm, the
plot unfolds through an unforgiving winter as the four men
find shelter with a pro-Confederate family. During this
time, a young widow named Sue Lee Shelly (Jewel) becomes
intimate with Chiles, and Clyde, too, is often away visiting
a lady friend. This leaves Roedel and Holt as the story's
focus. As these two racially and culturally different men
learn more about each other's lives, they become unlikely
friends. This friendship sets up the second half of the
movie but drags it down as well. After several tragic sequences
and some brief, grueling and well-shot battle scenes, Lee's
simple point becomes increasingly obvious: The Irregulars'
fight is a hollow one. Despite their ideology and passion,
the Bushwhackers eventually become a disorganized mob of
psychos fighting out of personal anger and youthful aggression.
Whereas this may sound like fascinating stuff (brother
against brother against brother), the film is continually
marred by drab, unexceptional acting and a plodding script.
At least in his other films Lee's actors soared with their
material; here, they're uncharismatic and look bored. There
are some exceptions, but not necessarily good ones: Ulrich
at least looks like a Southern plantation son--aristocratic
and slightly devilish--but he is given little to do but
feign charm. Jewel and Maguire, however, take up too much
of the second half of the movie and both deliver their lines
in an uncomfortable, stilted manner. True, the dialogue
often resembles Nicholas Cage's hilarious formality in the
Coen brothers' Raising Arizona (Maguire at one time
declares, "It ain't right and it ain't wrong, it just is"),
but surely the actors could have at least attempted naturalism.
Only Wright is given the chance to be authentic, multidimensional
and mysterious. His performance captures the intricacies
of the film's material better than Lee himself. The director's
typical aloofness, which worked well in The Ice Storm,
is the wrong aesthetic for this type of film: A movie about
the bloody, torn bonds of family and nation should not be
cold and heartless. Ang Lee may offer a new perspective
on familiar territory, but here his outsider status makes
his own characters seem aliens--a shame for such an intimate
story taken from the pages of American history.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published December 15,
1999
|
