Amazon.co.uk Review
Great period pictures make you feel as if you've stepped into another era, heard its language, breathed its spirit, and come away with a fresh perspective on that time as well as your own. Ride with the Devil is one of those special films--why wasn't it more widely embraced by reviewers and filmgoers? Did it rely too much on our patience for slow accumulation of unforced rhythms and meanings (as opposed to The Patriot, which "moved" audiences with cattle-prod simplicity and manipulation)? Ride with the Devil--smart, handsome, tenderly awed by how individual lives get ambushed by history--is ripe for rediscovery.
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 neighbours 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 (The Ice Storm) 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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Rides circles around GONE WITH THE WIND... but..........2007-10-18
What happens with intelligent scripts/movies? why they fail at the box office and the OSCARS (as if I care on the last!).
This is probably one of the best ACW films ever, ok, ACW on the Missouri border is not exactly glamorous... so what?... war is hell it is not?... and guerrilla warfare is a particular nasty form between neighbours...
EXCELLENT... if you did not get to the theater give it a second chance in DVD... period film but also action&adventure without undue romanticism... love and hate... yes, blood and guts... yes.
ADB
Startlingly good!.......2007-07-29
Ang Lee isn't interested in reenacting the major incidents that took place during the American Civil War in his period piece Ride with the Devil. Instead, the talented Tawain-born director -- who won a deserved Oscar for Brokeback Mountain -- is more concerned with the effects the war had on those who were on the losing side. Ride with the Devil is a contemplative, incisive treatment of a period of great turmoil in America's short history, approached from a unique viewpoint.
The film stars the reliable Tobey Maguire as Jake Roedel, the son of a German immigrant. Despite his father's strong support for Lincoln and the Union, Jake considers himself a Confederate. But not all of the community feel he's one of them. No matter how hard he tries, he will forever be an outsider it seems.
Then when the father of his best friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) is savagely murdered by a gang of Unionists, Jake and his friend pursue a life of crime among the bushwhackers, an army of Conferate guerrilla fighters led by Black John (Jim Caviezel). Lee highlights the absence of ideals in the hearts and minds of most soldiers. These men join the cause to pursue a vendetta. Once they have got revenge, Jake and Jack don't have much to fight for -- the war is all but over.
Practically the only female figure in the film is in the form of Sue Lee (popstar Jewel), a widow who is swiftly wooed by Jack Bull. Showing restraint and subtle composure, Jewel proves to be a robust thesp. She doesn't collapse into a fountain of tears alla Gwyneth Paltrow,despite the fact her character's "had bad luck" (severe bad luck, I hasten to add)
It would of course be an oversight to neglect to at least touch on the issue of slavery that fuelled the Civil War. Focusing on the side of the Confederates, the film presents us with an anomaly: Daniel Holt (played with quiet integrity by Jeffrey Wright), a black character who is effectively fighting for his "right" to be a slave. He fights alongside the very people who subjugate and taunt him. In one excruciating scene, he's belittled by the visiting Sue as well as his own companions while he sits in the shadows, resigned to this torment. He is indebted to George Clyde (Simon Baker), a bushwhacker who bought him out of slavery. Yet George Clyde condescends to Holt and treats him more like a beloved pet than a fellow human being.
Initially treating him as an inferior, Jake gradually realises Daniel (or "Holt" as he's more commonly referred to) is the only companion he's got and sees beyond the colour of his skin. There is a direct correlation between Jake's growing tolerance of Holt and his own disillusionment with the cause he's fighting for. As the casualties pile up, he begins to wonder what they died for. He begins to loose that feeling of solidarity with fellow bushwhackers; in the bigoted Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) he has a nemesis to deal with who is on the same side of the battlefield as him. The ambiguity of war has never been more convincing than here. The Lawrence massacre (a true-life event which cost the lives of 180 innocent civilians) that he himself partakes in despite his reservations seems to be indicative of the state of affairs: random violence and casual slaughter in the name of nothing more than pride and a refusal to change. Conveying every internal conflict on his eternally youthful face, Tobey Maguire gives a performance that makes you wish he had spent those years working on the Spiderman franchise doing more acting and less action.
The denouement may be a bit lengthy but it does allow the characters to breathe and blossom. As the characters heal from both their emotional and physical wounds, Ang Lee takes his time to round out his characters. Ang Lee's tone is sympathetic but is never in danger of veering into sentimentality. And although it would be described as a sombre film, James Schamus's screenplay includes some moments of unforced humour that lighten the occasionally stilted dialogue at times. When the time comes for Holt to depart and pursue his own life, we must leave two of the most compelling characters I've encountered on film. And while the film looks forward to an America that has been changed for ever, I found myself thinking back to scenes which involved Holt or Jake. It's a film laden with tragedy but I found it strangely uplifting: I wore a smile as the screen faded to black.
Middle of the road and ratings.........................2007-07-23
Is where I would place this movie. Everyones opinion is bound to be different and I can't go overboard like some reviewers seemingly have but I can't run down what is a reasonable film.The story takes us through part of the American Civil War really with the story told to us by Jake Rodell(Tobey Maguire)who is one of a group of Confederate supporting horsemen attacking and raiding the Unionist Norths soldiers.This film contains love,brutality and the in-fighting that this worst kind of war brings.Also stars Skeet Ulrich,Jeffrey Wright and Jewel. I rated Open Range & Lonesome Dove 5 stars so I think 3 is about right for this.
Not bad but could do better.......2007-06-27
Having read the reviews I was expecting a tough, gritty film dealing with relationships and the harsh realities of war. Tough and gritty it was not but then again we were spoilt by The Proposition on that score. Toby Maguire merely meanders through this film, Ulrich is a TV actor at best, Jewell is a singer (enough said) and in Jeffrey Wright they casted a man who deserved much superior dialogue and the "I'm gonna find my ma" stereotype has been done endless times previously and with much greater success. This film is decidedly average.
Work of genius.......2006-12-14
Outsanding movie that will linger on in the mind long after the final scenes. Vivid brutal portrayal of Civil war and how it steels men souls and compels them to do terrible things in the name of cause. Maguire is excellent, he portrays a farmers son who along with some friends conduct a clandestine war on behalf of the Confederacy. In the course of the movie he loses close friends, becomes disillusioned with war and violence and in the process becomes a man. Some of the imagery is breath taking, the acting excellent, surley one of the greatest Civil war movies ever made and a beautiful love story to boot. No idle sentimenet just a cracking movie that continues to delight on more viewings. Movies dont get much better than this.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Great period pictures make you feel as if you've stepped into another era, heard its language, breathed its spirit, and come away with a fresh perspective on that time as well as your own. Ride with the Devil is one of those special films--why wasn't it more widely embraced by reviewers and filmgoers? Did it rely too much on our patience for slow accumulation of unforced rhythms and meanings (as opposed to The Patriot, which "moved" audiences with cattle-prod simplicity and manipulation)? Ride with the Devil--smart, handsome, tenderly awed by how individual lives get ambushed by history--is ripe for rediscovery.
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 neighbours 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 (The Ice Storm) 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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Rides circles around GONE WITH THE WIND... but..........2007-10-18
What happens with intelligent scripts/movies? why they fail at the box office and the OSCARS (as if I care on the last!).
This is probably one of the best ACW films ever, ok, ACW on the Missouri border is not exactly glamorous... so what?... war is hell it is not?... and guerrilla warfare is a particular nasty form between neighbours...
EXCELLENT... if you did not get to the theater give it a second chance in DVD... period film but also action&adventure without undue romanticism... love and hate... yes, blood and guts... yes.
ADB
Startlingly good!.......2007-07-29
Ang Lee isn't interested in reenacting the major incidents that took place during the American Civil War in his period piece Ride with the Devil. Instead, the talented Tawain-born director -- who won a deserved Oscar for Brokeback Mountain -- is more concerned with the effects the war had on those who were on the losing side. Ride with the Devil is a contemplative, incisive treatment of a period of great turmoil in America's short history, approached from a unique viewpoint.
The film stars the reliable Tobey Maguire as Jake Roedel, the son of a German immigrant. Despite his father's strong support for Lincoln and the Union, Jake considers himself a Confederate. But not all of the community feel he's one of them. No matter how hard he tries, he will forever be an outsider it seems.
Then when the father of his best friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) is savagely murdered by a gang of Unionists, Jake and his friend pursue a life of crime among the bushwhackers, an army of Conferate guerrilla fighters led by Black John (Jim Caviezel). Lee highlights the absence of ideals in the hearts and minds of most soldiers. These men join the cause to pursue a vendetta. Once they have got revenge, Jake and Jack don't have much to fight for -- the war is all but over.
Practically the only female figure in the film is in the form of Sue Lee (popstar Jewel), a widow who is swiftly wooed by Jack Bull. Showing restraint and subtle composure, Jewel proves to be a robust thesp. She doesn't collapse into a fountain of tears alla Gwyneth Paltrow,despite the fact her character's "had bad luck" (severe bad luck, I hasten to add)
It would of course be an oversight to neglect to at least touch on the issue of slavery that fuelled the Civil War. Focusing on the side of the Confederates, the film presents us with an anomaly: Daniel Holt (played with quiet integrity by Jeffrey Wright), a black character who is effectively fighting for his "right" to be a slave. He fights alongside the very people who subjugate and taunt him. In one excruciating scene, he's belittled by the visiting Sue as well as his own companions while he sits in the shadows, resigned to this torment. He is indebted to George Clyde (Simon Baker), a bushwhacker who bought him out of slavery. Yet George Clyde condescends to Holt and treats him more like a beloved pet than a fellow human being.
Initially treating him as an inferior, Jake gradually realises Daniel (or "Holt" as he's more commonly referred to) is the only companion he's got and sees beyond the colour of his skin. There is a direct correlation between Jake's growing tolerance of Holt and his own disillusionment with the cause he's fighting for. As the casualties pile up, he begins to wonder what they died for. He begins to loose that feeling of solidarity with fellow bushwhackers; in the bigoted Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) he has a nemesis to deal with who is on the same side of the battlefield as him. The ambiguity of war has never been more convincing than here. The Lawrence massacre (a true-life event which cost the lives of 180 innocent civilians) that he himself partakes in despite his reservations seems to be indicative of the state of affairs: random violence and casual slaughter in the name of nothing more than pride and a refusal to change. Conveying every internal conflict on his eternally youthful face, Tobey Maguire gives a performance that makes you wish he had spent those years working on the Spiderman franchise doing more acting and less action.
The denouement may be a bit lengthy but it does allow the characters to breathe and blossom. As the characters heal from both their emotional and physical wounds, Ang Lee takes his time to round out his characters. Ang Lee's tone is sympathetic but is never in danger of veering into sentimentality. And although it would be described as a sombre film, James Schamus's screenplay includes some moments of unforced humour that lighten the occasionally stilted dialogue at times. When the time comes for Holt to depart and pursue his own life, we must leave two of the most compelling characters I've encountered on film. And while the film looks forward to an America that has been changed for ever, I found myself thinking back to scenes which involved Holt or Jake. It's a film laden with tragedy but I found it strangely uplifting: I wore a smile as the screen faded to black.
Middle of the road and ratings.........................2007-07-23
Is where I would place this movie. Everyones opinion is bound to be different and I can't go overboard like some reviewers seemingly have but I can't run down what is a reasonable film.The story takes us through part of the American Civil War really with the story told to us by Jake Rodell(Tobey Maguire)who is one of a group of Confederate supporting horsemen attacking and raiding the Unionist Norths soldiers.This film contains love,brutality and the in-fighting that this worst kind of war brings.Also stars Skeet Ulrich,Jeffrey Wright and Jewel. I rated Open Range & Lonesome Dove 5 stars so I think 3 is about right for this.
Not bad but could do better.......2007-06-27
Having read the reviews I was expecting a tough, gritty film dealing with relationships and the harsh realities of war. Tough and gritty it was not but then again we were spoilt by The Proposition on that score. Toby Maguire merely meanders through this film, Ulrich is a TV actor at best, Jewell is a singer (enough said) and in Jeffrey Wright they casted a man who deserved much superior dialogue and the "I'm gonna find my ma" stereotype has been done endless times previously and with much greater success. This film is decidedly average.
Work of genius.......2006-12-14
Outsanding movie that will linger on in the mind long after the final scenes. Vivid brutal portrayal of Civil war and how it steels men souls and compels them to do terrible things in the name of cause. Maguire is excellent, he portrays a farmers son who along with some friends conduct a clandestine war on behalf of the Confederacy. In the course of the movie he loses close friends, becomes disillusioned with war and violence and in the process becomes a man. Some of the imagery is breath taking, the acting excellent, surley one of the greatest Civil war movies ever made and a beautiful love story to boot. No idle sentimenet just a cracking movie that continues to delight on more viewings. Movies dont get much better than this.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Great period pictures make you feel as if you've stepped into another era, heard its language, breathed its spirit, and come away with a fresh perspective on that time as well as your own. Ride with the Devil is one of those special films--why wasn't it more widely embraced by reviewers and filmgoers? Did it rely too much on our patience for slow accumulation of unforced rhythms and meanings (as opposed to The Patriot, which "moved" audiences with cattle-prod simplicity and manipulation)? Ride with the Devil--smart, handsome, tenderly awed by how individual lives get ambushed by history--is ripe for rediscovery.
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 neighbours 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 (The Ice Storm) 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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Rides circles around GONE WITH THE WIND... but..........2007-10-18
What happens with intelligent scripts/movies? why they fail at the box office and the OSCARS (as if I care on the last!).
This is probably one of the best ACW films ever, ok, ACW on the Missouri border is not exactly glamorous... so what?... war is hell it is not?... and guerrilla warfare is a particular nasty form between neighbours...
EXCELLENT... if you did not get to the theater give it a second chance in DVD... period film but also action&adventure without undue romanticism... love and hate... yes, blood and guts... yes.
ADB
Startlingly good!.......2007-07-29
Ang Lee isn't interested in reenacting the major incidents that took place during the American Civil War in his period piece Ride with the Devil. Instead, the talented Tawain-born director -- who won a deserved Oscar for Brokeback Mountain -- is more concerned with the effects the war had on those who were on the losing side. Ride with the Devil is a contemplative, incisive treatment of a period of great turmoil in America's short history, approached from a unique viewpoint.
The film stars the reliable Tobey Maguire as Jake Roedel, the son of a German immigrant. Despite his father's strong support for Lincoln and the Union, Jake considers himself a Confederate. But not all of the community feel he's one of them. No matter how hard he tries, he will forever be an outsider it seems.
Then when the father of his best friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) is savagely murdered by a gang of Unionists, Jake and his friend pursue a life of crime among the bushwhackers, an army of Conferate guerrilla fighters led by Black John (Jim Caviezel). Lee highlights the absence of ideals in the hearts and minds of most soldiers. These men join the cause to pursue a vendetta. Once they have got revenge, Jake and Jack don't have much to fight for -- the war is all but over.
Practically the only female figure in the film is in the form of Sue Lee (popstar Jewel), a widow who is swiftly wooed by Jack Bull. Showing restraint and subtle composure, Jewel proves to be a robust thesp. She doesn't collapse into a fountain of tears alla Gwyneth Paltrow,despite the fact her character's "had bad luck" (severe bad luck, I hasten to add)
It would of course be an oversight to neglect to at least touch on the issue of slavery that fuelled the Civil War. Focusing on the side of the Confederates, the film presents us with an anomaly: Daniel Holt (played with quiet integrity by Jeffrey Wright), a black character who is effectively fighting for his "right" to be a slave. He fights alongside the very people who subjugate and taunt him. In one excruciating scene, he's belittled by the visiting Sue as well as his own companions while he sits in the shadows, resigned to this torment. He is indebted to George Clyde (Simon Baker), a bushwhacker who bought him out of slavery. Yet George Clyde condescends to Holt and treats him more like a beloved pet than a fellow human being.
Initially treating him as an inferior, Jake gradually realises Daniel (or "Holt" as he's more commonly referred to) is the only companion he's got and sees beyond the colour of his skin. There is a direct correlation between Jake's growing tolerance of Holt and his own disillusionment with the cause he's fighting for. As the casualties pile up, he begins to wonder what they died for. He begins to loose that feeling of solidarity with fellow bushwhackers; in the bigoted Pitt Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) he has a nemesis to deal with who is on the same side of the battlefield as him. The ambiguity of war has never been more convincing than here. The Lawrence massacre (a true-life event which cost the lives of 180 innocent civilians) that he himself partakes in despite his reservations seems to be indicative of the state of affairs: random violence and casual slaughter in the name of nothing more than pride and a refusal to change. Conveying every internal conflict on his eternally youthful face, Tobey Maguire gives a performance that makes you wish he had spent those years working on the Spiderman franchise doing more acting and less action.
The denouement may be a bit lengthy but it does allow the characters to breathe and blossom. As the characters heal from both their emotional and physical wounds, Ang Lee takes his time to round out his characters. Ang Lee's tone is sympathetic but is never in danger of veering into sentimentality. And although it would be described as a sombre film, James Schamus's screenplay includes some moments of unforced humour that lighten the occasionally stilted dialogue at times. When the time comes for Holt to depart and pursue his own life, we must leave two of the most compelling characters I've encountered on film. And while the film looks forward to an America that has been changed for ever, I found myself thinking back to scenes which involved Holt or Jake. It's a film laden with tragedy but I found it strangely uplifting: I wore a smile as the screen faded to black.
Middle of the road and ratings.........................2007-07-23
Is where I would place this movie. Everyones opinion is bound to be different and I can't go overboard like some reviewers seemingly have but I can't run down what is a reasonable film.The story takes us through part of the American Civil War really with the story told to us by Jake Rodell(Tobey Maguire)who is one of a group of Confederate supporting horsemen attacking and raiding the Unionist Norths soldiers.This film contains love,brutality and the in-fighting that this worst kind of war brings.Also stars Skeet Ulrich,Jeffrey Wright and Jewel. I rated Open Range & Lonesome Dove 5 stars so I think 3 is about right for this.
Not bad but could do better.......2007-06-27
Having read the reviews I was expecting a tough, gritty film dealing with relationships and the harsh realities of war. Tough and gritty it was not but then again we were spoilt by The Proposition on that score. Toby Maguire merely meanders through this film, Ulrich is a TV actor at best, Jewell is a singer (enough said) and in Jeffrey Wright they casted a man who deserved much superior dialogue and the "I'm gonna find my ma" stereotype has been done endless times previously and with much greater success. This film is decidedly average.
Work of genius.......2006-12-14
Outsanding movie that will linger on in the mind long after the final scenes. Vivid brutal portrayal of Civil war and how it steels men souls and compels them to do terrible things in the name of cause. Maguire is excellent, he portrays a farmers son who along with some friends conduct a clandestine war on behalf of the Confederacy. In the course of the movie he loses close friends, becomes disillusioned with war and violence and in the process becomes a man. Some of the imagery is breath taking, the acting excellent, surley one of the greatest Civil war movies ever made and a beautiful love story to boot. No idle sentimenet just a cracking movie that continues to delight on more viewings. Movies dont get much better than this.
DVD:
- Rio Bravo (2 Disc Special Edition) [1959]
- Robin Hood - Series 1 Volume 1 [2006]
- Robin Of Sherwood - The Complete Series 2 [1984]
- Romancing The Stone [1984]
- Ronin (Two Disc Special Edition) [1998]
- Saint The - Dvd [1997]
- Shaft [2000]
- Shaolin Soccer [2001]
- Speed 2 - Cruise Control [1997]
- Star Wars Trilogy 6 discs Limited Edition Tin Box Set [1977]
DVD List
DVD
![Ride With The Devil [1999]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/216J21ZB09L.jpg)
All Action & Adventure
|
Action & Adventure
|
Categories
|
DVD
|
Video
![Glory [1990]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004T8WY.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Glory [1990]
![Gods And Generals [2003]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0001XLY2E.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Gods And Generals [2003]
![Gettysburg (Double sided DVD) [1993]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0001Z6440.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Gettysburg (Double sided DVD) [1993]
![Broken Trail [2006]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000PI3V5S.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Broken Trail [2006]
![Last Stand At Saber River [1997]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000803PU4.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
Last Stand At Saber River [1997]
![Ride With The Devil [1999]](http://www.bill88.com/buy.gif)
![Ride with the Devil [1999] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/217SFMMQ5FL.jpg)
![Ride with the Devil [1999]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/216PB9B0C9L.jpg)