Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Ride with the Devil (1999)

Director: Ang Lee

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Building on the qualities of Wedding Banquet, Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm, director Lee here tackles a far grander subject - the American Civil War. About a unit of young 'Bushwhackers' - Southern guerillas tackling Yankee platoons - it focuses on the experiences of two friends: plantation owner's son Jack Bull (Ulrich) and Jake (Maguire), both basically liberal on the issue of slavery but driven by vengeance and proud loyalty to bear arms for the Confederacy. Steadily, however, as altercations with volatile colleague Pitt (Rhys Meyers), Jack's encounter with the widow Sue Lee (Jewel), and Jake's deepening friendship with ex-slave Daniel (Wright) take effect, the pair find themselves rebels without a cause. Truly epic in scale yet full of beautifully observed details, the film benefits hugely from sturdy yet exquisite performances, Frederick Elmes' typically meaty camerawork and yet another intelligent and incisive James Schamus script. The social and ethical issues are treated with depth, but there's no sermonising; the light touch extends to a gentle humour interspersed amid the carnage. Like The Outlaw Josey Wales and Once Upon a Time in America, it's a tale of hatred transformed by disillusionment into a redemptive desire to abandon bloodlust and look to the future.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Ang Lee

Producer: Ted Hope, Robert F Colesberry, James Schamus

Cast: Skeet Ulrich, Tobey Maguire, Jewel, Jeffrey Wright, Simon Baker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, James Caviezel, Thomas Guiry, Tom Wilkinson, Jonathan Brandis, Matthew Faber full cast

Genre(s): Westerns

Duration: 138 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.