Ride with the Devil (1999)
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Ride with the Devil Movie Review
Ride with the Devil is a 1999 revisionist western film directed by Ang Lee and starring Tobey Maguire. It’s a movie that is too long and uninvolving for most audiences.
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“Don’t think you are a good man.
The thought will spoil you“
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During the American Civil War, two friends join the Bushwhackers, a militant group loyal to the Confederacy. This is one of those movies that are perfect for school purposes and those interested in US history, but for everybody else it’s a shore to sit through. It’s also one of those films that are so densely plotted and characterized that they remind you of a novel more so than a book, and the fact that it wasn’t based on any preexisting media surprised me.
The character development and the acting performances are definitely the highlights in this picture. I have never been a fan of Tobey Maguire, but he is surprisingly strong here as a young man who had to grow up too quickly due to harsh circumstances. His story is familiar, but very well told. Others are also quite commendable with Wright and Ulrich particularly delivering solid work, but the movie has way too many characters, and thus their impact is blunted. The protagonist remains the most interesting figure.
Ride with the Devil is also technically stupendous, and it’s odd that the film went unnoticed by the tech awards, but that is probably due to the otherwise low impact that the movie had both on critics and at the box office. It deserves special praise for its production design, costumes, score, well executed action scenes and terrific cinematography. It also has fantastic attention to detail when it comes to recreating its time period.
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However, none of that mattered all that much when the movie was indecisive in tone as Lee never decided whether to go into full the full epic action territory or the more contemplative dialogue and character-driven storytelling. He attempted to do both, but in doing so, he ended up not being great at either one of those. I did appreciate that he tried to do a western movie and that he included some solid themes, but the runtime definitely should have been much shorter for the movie to have a wider appeal.
