Ride with the Devil (1999)

Information from IMDb

Plot Summary
Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles are friends in Missouri when the Civil War starts.
Women and Blacks have few rights. Jack Bull's dad is killed by Union soldiers,
so the young men join the Bushwhackers, irregulars loyal to the South.
One is a Black man, Daniel Holt, beholden to the man who bought his freedom.
They skirmish then spend long hours hiding. Sue Lee, a young widow, brings them food.
She and Jack Bull become lovers, and when he's grievously wounded,
Jake escorts her south to a safe farm. The Bushwhackers, led by men set on revenge,
make a raid into Kansas. At 19, Jake is ill at ease with war.
As his friends die one after another, he must decide where honor lies.

Full Cast
Tobey Maguire ... Jake Roedel
Jeremy W. Auman ... Guard
Scott Sener ... Guard (as Scott C. Sener)
Skeet Ulrich ... Jack Bull Chiles
Glenn Q. Pierce ... Minister
Kathleen Warfel ... Mrs. Chiles
David Darlow ... Asa Chiles
Zan McLeod ... Wedding Musician - Guitar
John Whelan ... Wedding Musician - Accordion
Roger Landes ... Wedding Musician - Mandolin
Jeffrey Dover ... Wedding Musician - Drums
Tyler Johnson ... Wedding Musician - Drums
Kelly Werts ... Wedding Musician - Fiddle
Michael W. Nash ... Horton Lee, Sr.
John Judd ... Otto Roedel
Don Shanks ... George
Jay Thorson ... Ted
Dean Vivian ... Storekeeper
Cheryl Weaver ... Storekeeper's Wife
Jim Caviezel ... Black John
Jonathan Rhys Meyers ... Pitt Mackeson
Simon Baker ... George Clyde
Matthew Faber ... Turner Rawls
Tom Guiry ... Riley Crawford (as Thomas Guiry)
Jonathan Brandis ... Cave Wyatt
Jeffrey Wright ... Daniel Holt
Celia Weston ... Mrs. Clark
and many, many more...

Produced
Anne Carey .... associate producer
Robert F. Colesberry .... producer
Ted Hope .... producer
David Linde .... executive producer
James Schamus .... producer

Writing Credits
Daniel Woodrell (novel "Woe to Live On")
James Schamus (screenplay)

Original Music
Mychael Danna

Cinematography
Frederick Elmes

Trivia
The looting and burning of Lawrence, Kansas actually occurred on 21 August 1863.

The scenes of the Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas were filmed in Pattonsburg, Missouri. Pattonsburg was flooded out during the great flood of 1993 and the town was relocated leaving many empty buildings and homes available.

According to Jewel Kilcher, director Ang Lee cast her as Sue mainly because of her crooked teeth, which he thought looked like the teeth a poor woman living in the 1860s would have.

Goofs
Anachronisms
Civil-war era skirts did not have even one in-seam pocket, let alone two. Fancy Chatelaines were used to hold purses and other items by the wealthier women, and the poorer classes made do with cloth pockets suspended from a strap that was pinned to the waistband. Flat surface pockets came in after the closing of the civil war.

In the very last scene, as Holt is riding away you can see three flashes of light in the sky - landing lights from planes circling a nearby airport.
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After German boy is told his father was killed, there is a brief scene of a woman standing in a doorway. The door has modern day machine-made lace.

Continuity
When Jake is preparing to go to bed after his marriage and is talking with Daniel Holt he removes his left boot three times.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs
A wooden country revival style "teddy bear" is seen in "Aunt Wilma's" parlor. The distinctive "teddy bear" was created in honor of Teddy Roosevelt, decades later, however toy wooden bears were common items even before the Civil War. The story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was written in 1834, greatly increasing interest in toy bears. Stuffed bear toys started showing up in catalogs as early as 1894, long before Teddy Roosevelt was associated with them.

Revealing mistakes
When Jake complains of losing the upper-half of his pinky finger, the brace holding down the top joints of the actor's finger is briefly shown as the camera pulls in on his hand.

The revolver aimed by Jake Rudel does not display blank safety wads. It is a well-known fact that black powder filled chambers finished off with the tamped-down ball only, were not safe from cross firing of the adjacent chamber. So it was always minimized by finishing off the chamber with lard or other material that would isolate it thereby minimizing the danger of inadvertent adjacent chamber discharge.

Memorable Quotes

Filming Locations
Doniphan, Kansas, USA
Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Leavenworth, Kansas, USA
Lexington, Missouri, USA
Miami, Kansas, USA

Ride with the Devil is a 1999 American Revisionist Western film directed by Ang Lee
The storyline was conceived from a screenplay written by James Schamus,
based on a book entitled Woe to Live On, by author Daniel Woodrell.
The events portrayed in the novel and film take place in Missouri,
amidst escalating guerrilla warfare at the onset of the American Civil War.
Within the film, a loose dramatization of the Lawrence Massacre is depicted.
Incorporated in the plot is the character of Jake Roedel, played by actor Tobey Maguire.
Roedel, a Southern militiaman, joins a group of marauders known as the Bushwhackers.
The gang attempt to disrupt and marginalize the political activities of Northern Jayhawkers
allied with Union soldiers.
The ensemble cast also features Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Brandis, Jim Caviezel and musician Jewel.

The film was a co-production between the motion picture studios of Universal Studios
and Good Machine. Theatrically,
it was commercially distributed by the USA Films division of Universal. In 2010,
The Criterion Collection released a restored high-definition digital transfer of the film
for the home media market.
Ride with the Devil explores politics, violence and war.
Following its limited release in theaters, the film failed to garner any award nominations
for its acting or production merits from accredited film organizations.
On November 23, 1999, the original motion picture soundtrack was released by the
Atlantic Records label.
The film score was composed and orchestrated by Mychael Danna and Nicholas Dodd.
Singer songwriter Jewel also contributed a musical track to the score
from her second studio album Spirit.

Principal photography began on March 25, 1998. Ride with the Devil premiered
in theaters nationwide in the United States on November 26, 1999 grossing $635,096 in domestic ticket receipts.
Taking into account its $38 million budget costs, the film was considered a major box office bomb.
However, preceding its initial screening in cinemas, the film was generally met with positive critical reviews.
With its initial foray into the home video rental market; the widescreen DVD edition of the film
featuring the theatrical trailer, scene selections, and production notes, among other highlights,
was released in the United States on July 18, 2000.

User Review

Quote

There are no heros ... just great film makers
2 April 2001 | by dare31 (Alberta, Canada)

Easily 9 out of 10 for a film by director we will continue to grow to admire. But don't watch this movie expecting to be "entertained." Ang Lee takes an objective look at a relatively unexplored aspect of the Civil War. What is beautiful about the movie, like all of Lee's films, is that he doesn't "side" with his characters. He creates characters, embodies them with life, problems, and ambiguity ... and endows them with a reality that often hits far closer to home than with which many are comfortable. This film has action, but it is not for the action lover since the violence is deeply disturbing and far from gratuitous ... i.e. like the characters, it is real. And as you would expect about one of mankind's most horrific wars, the violence is horrific.

But as an exploration of the greater human ambiguity that surely dwelt within the Civil War, it is a masterpiece. Was the war about slavery and an abolitionism? Lee seems quite willing to blur that line made so popular in depictions like the Blue and the Grey. Neither is about idealism, though, as seen in Gone with the Wind. It is about freedom, about the desire to have something which is yours and to fight for it. As you watch the characters, you will ask yourself "how can they be fighting to preserve slavery?" The fact is, I don't think they really are, and in that the film shows the problem of why so many were caught up in the maelstrom of the Civil War.

The fact seems clear that many of the characters we learn about are fighting out of senses of loyalty to "home" though they may never have examined what home represents or whether they truly espouse its values. The letter scenes are very moving and yet subtle. Jake and Daniel are other examples of loyalty stretched to the limits. And when the tension finally snaps, and these characters find themselves suddenly "free" ... we see the birth of new men.

All this mixed in with Lee's beautiful incorporation of humankind's environment with breathtaking vistas and frames. Lee has a style which is his, somehow European in its "art" (a slow camera, unrushed), Asian in its epic-ness and development of story, and yet somehow familiar and easily accessible to so many in North Americans.

Relax, let go of your preconceptions about what the Civil War is, what the "western" as a genre is, what a war movie should be ... and let Ang Lee take you into a world so fragile, so hard, so real that few of us can comfortably see it.

In this, Lee continues what he wrought in Ice Storm. Again, the movie is slow paced and without apparent "direction" ... a sure sign of Lee's ability to direct without "imposing" himself on the story or screen. His direction is amplified by what he brings out of Jewel (yes, the singer), a hitherto unproven actress who puts in an amazing performance.

A movie for those who love film and are not lovers of the standard Hollywood epic.

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