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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
DVD Description
DVD Special Features:
Trailer Featurette
Behind the Scenes
Ratio 16:9 Anamorphic
Dolby Digital 5.1
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 55 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Possibly. But even if some people disagree, there is no denying that it is a fabulous movie. It moves along with a grace and ease that many films of this genre cannot manage. While it is Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ullrich who share the top billing, starring as two teenage boys who become Bushwhackers (Guerilla soldiers who fight for the southern cause along the Kansas and Missouri border during the American Civil War) after Ullrich's father is killed and his house burnt down by Northern Jayhawkers, this is really Maguire and Jeffery Wright's film. Maguire's character is of German descent, a thing out of the ordinary amongst the White Anglo-saxon Protestant southerners, and as such is viewed with suspicion (and in one case downright hostility) by many of the men he is fighting alongside, something that his German Father warned him would happen. He also harbours his own prejudices however, especially against a freed Negro (Wright) who is fighting with them, but as the film moves on Maguire begins to look at events through a different perspective. The acting by all the leads is exceptional, but it is Maguire and Wright who must take most of the plaudits. They are both outsiders, thrown together fighting for a cause, that by all natural laws they should be fighting against. Their changing relationship, from suspicion on Maguire's part to acceptance and then finally to deep friendship is the core of the movie. Ullrich, Jewel (who plays a young widowed southern women romanced first by Ullrich and then Maguire) Jonathon Rhys-Meyers (as a psychotic Jayhawker) and Jim Caviezel (as a southern commander) all turn in first rate performances, but it is Maguire and Wright who really drive the movie along. It is an intelligent, thought provoking, moving, amusing, uplifting and sad movie. Basically the kind of movie that mainstream Hollywood tends to shy away from, and unfortunately, the kind of movie that mainstream audiences tend to pass over. This is a great pity, because Ride with the Devil deserved to take a bucketload of Oscars and a barrowload of Dollars at the box office, which it did neither of.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
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.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
If you want a war film of the black hawk down genre, then give this a miss. It's message will probably pass you by just as it surely did with the negative reviewer below. Highlighting the amputation scene as "the best bit" says it all. Its a protrayal of civil war played out at it lowest level, with neighbour fighting against neighbour and how that ultimatly affects peoples perceptions, loyalties and relationships. Excellent acting and a truly plausible scenario sensitivley portrayed.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Proves that Ang Lee is superb all-round Director...
Ride With the Devil is an intelligent film that follows more the way a great novel would, rather than a shoot'em'up blockbuster. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Tim Kidner
a good watch and action packed too
I liked this movie and it's take on the civil war.Well acted and fast paced.
The fight scenes were top notch and the sense of family was strongly realised too.
The fight scenes were top notch and the sense of family was strongly realised too.
Published 5 months ago by Paul Morris
I'd be bad meat - pretty well rotted to a glob.
Ride with the Devil is directed by Ang Lee and adapted to screenplay by James Schamus (also producer) from the novel "Woe to Live On" written by Daniel Woodrell. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Spike Owen
There is no nobility in these southern talibans
The civil war is seen in its horror on the only southern side but in Missouri which is not exactly the south. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Jacques COULARDEAU
yes, there are subtitles on the blu ray
A fantastic film in all respects, but most especially considering the language. The script, based on the amazing novel by Daniel Woodrell ("Woe to Live On"), tries to reproduce... Read more
Published on 13 April 2010 by Cannucklehead Film Addict
Another Civil War Gem
Ang Lee is a great director and he has now leant his considerable talent to making a gem of a film about the American Civil War that has both depth and superb acting, which... Read more
Published on 2 April 2010 by B. D. Compton
Ride With The Devil - worth watching
A good action movie based on historical event, it is worth watching for those non Americans interested in the events in and around the civil war.
Published on 7 Oct 2009 by S. Henderson
Thoroughly enjoyable
This is indeed a thoroughly enjoyable film. My knowledge of the American Civil War is pretty limited so I was surprised I enjoyed this so much. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2009 by sp
Uncompromising,Real,Gritty.
This Film has already been reviewed in great detail,all i can add is that this Film deals in depth between the little known war fought between the Unionist "Jayhawkers" and the... Read more
Published on 19 July 2009 by The Old Git
Why no subtitles
I find it incredible that their are still DVD's being issued that carry no subtitles for us viewers being hearing impaired, and there are many of us. Read more
Published on 19 April 2009 by Kenneth J. Bowman
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