Ang Lee's "Ride with the Devil" (1999) is a look at Missouri bushwhackers who were something like a cell using the mantle of the Civil War to go about settling personal grudges. It's based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, Woe to live on.
The movie is visually beautiful. It was filmed on location in western Missouri and eastern Kansas, so the "you are there" aspect is correct. The score is perfect. For the most part, the actors were unfamiliar to me. Which is good in that you don't think to yourself, "Quantrill is Brad Pitt." Instead Quantrill was Quantrill (actually John Ales but he and I are strangers to one another). The downside of not knowing one actor from another is that it's harder to keep the characters straight. There were an awful lot of young men with flowing locks and similar body types.
In one engagement the bushwhackers terrorize a middle-aged storekeeper and his wife, killing him and setting fire to their place. Their code prevents them from striking out at his wife, however. "We don't hurt women." No, we just murder their menfolk before their eyes, destroy every earthly possession and ride off leaving the women "unhurt."
One evening a bushwhacker gives a sack of Union mail to Jakob Roedel (Tobey Maguire's character) and tells him to read some of the letters. Roedel is taken aback. "That's someone else's letter," he tells his compatriot. "I don't care to read it." But Jake is urged to break his personal code of honor. There might be some valuable intelligence in one of the letters.
Jake picks a letter from a woman in Wisconsin to her son. Maguire's flat, plain voice is just right here. The mother writes to her absent son about mundane happenings at the homeplace. "The dirt was turned over, and the smell and deepness gave me heart. It is just black rich. You boys know how that is." One bushwhacker remarks, "Sounds like my mother." The ordinariness of the letter breaks the spell of hijinks for that evening, at least.
The peak of the action is Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence is the symbol of everything these bushwhackers hate. It's home to abolitionists and it has a school, where young minds are taught to think like the government wants them to think.
It's really a thrilling scene, all those young men on horseback riding 50 abreast, thundering into the small town of Lawrence, where they scatter and go about their mission. The Union soldiers encamped there look up in surprise and scatter as the bushwhackers come galloping through, firing at everything in trousers (or in union suits if they weren't dressed yet). Quantrill has told his troops beforehand that they are to kill everyone whose name is on "the list." I suppose there was some method to their madness but by the time the raiders are done, they are piling bodies on Main Street.
At the end of his years-long killing spree, one bushwhacker looked like a stoned gang member with a dead soul. But, hey, at least he was thinking for himself.
The movie is visually beautiful. It was filmed on location in western Missouri and eastern Kansas, so the "you are there" aspect is correct. The score is perfect. For the most part, the actors were unfamiliar to me. Which is good in that you don't think to yourself, "Quantrill is Brad Pitt." Instead Quantrill was Quantrill (actually John Ales but he and I are strangers to one another). The downside of not knowing one actor from another is that it's harder to keep the characters straight. There were an awful lot of young men with flowing locks and similar body types.
In one engagement the bushwhackers terrorize a middle-aged storekeeper and his wife, killing him and setting fire to their place. Their code prevents them from striking out at his wife, however. "We don't hurt women." No, we just murder their menfolk before their eyes, destroy every earthly possession and ride off leaving the women "unhurt."
One evening a bushwhacker gives a sack of Union mail to Jakob Roedel (Tobey Maguire's character) and tells him to read some of the letters. Roedel is taken aback. "That's someone else's letter," he tells his compatriot. "I don't care to read it." But Jake is urged to break his personal code of honor. There might be some valuable intelligence in one of the letters.
Jake picks a letter from a woman in Wisconsin to her son. Maguire's flat, plain voice is just right here. The mother writes to her absent son about mundane happenings at the homeplace. "The dirt was turned over, and the smell and deepness gave me heart. It is just black rich. You boys know how that is." One bushwhacker remarks, "Sounds like my mother." The ordinariness of the letter breaks the spell of hijinks for that evening, at least.
The peak of the action is Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence is the symbol of everything these bushwhackers hate. It's home to abolitionists and it has a school, where young minds are taught to think like the government wants them to think.
It's really a thrilling scene, all those young men on horseback riding 50 abreast, thundering into the small town of Lawrence, where they scatter and go about their mission. The Union soldiers encamped there look up in surprise and scatter as the bushwhackers come galloping through, firing at everything in trousers (or in union suits if they weren't dressed yet). Quantrill has told his troops beforehand that they are to kill everyone whose name is on "the list." I suppose there was some method to their madness but by the time the raiders are done, they are piling bodies on Main Street.
At the end of his years-long killing spree, one bushwhacker looked like a stoned gang member with a dead soul. But, hey, at least he was thinking for himself.