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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
Ride With The Devil
135 minutes (15) EV widescreen 2.35:1
Director: Ang Lee
review by Tony Lee
A busy but undistinguished western based on Daniel Woodrell's 'Woe To Live On', Ride
With The Devil offers first class acting from a predominantly young cast
(including Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, and pop star Jewel), and some rousing battle
scenes, but nothing else of consequence. This, then, is the sort of film they talk
about when claiming that the western is 'dead' as a genre.
Set on the Kansas/Missouri border during the American Civil War, we find the
untrained bushwhackers led by Toby Maguire hiding out for the winter after a season
of surprise attacks on Union soldiers and Yankee sympathisers. But their lair is
discovered and the fighting between the blues and the greys leaves the group broken
apart, and their once strong ties of family and friendship rendered meaningless. Ang
Lee stages the climactic battles with commensurate skill, but when so many other
westerns have covered the political territory before it with big-budget, megastar
thoroughness, there's not much else to be said on the subject, really. This film may
be of interest to history scholars capable of nit-picking the period authenticity,
but I don't think it works very well as a piece of entertainment. We see a wild
cowboy riding around town with a Union flag tied to his horse's arse, dragging the
stars and bars through all the dirt he can find, and that about sums up the south-
centred sentiment on display here.
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