I live in the area where this history was made. If you ever get to this general area, be sure to visit the Trading Post Museum. If you can catch them open, you are in for a wealth o information. Much happened here, and much of it is recorded in the museum. There are other historical sites to visit in this area, but start at the Trading Post. If you can go east a short distance, visit Island Mound State Historic Site. This is a relatively new Missouri State Historical Site. Incredible history to be found throughout this area. For the record, I'm in Drexel, MO, on the Bates County side. I know the film wasn't shot here, but it certainly captured the sense of that era. I live just north of a couple of rail stops that were thriving communities at the time. Merwyn had a college, and West Point was a large town. Not much remains of either.

"People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does." ― Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilization) Offering an interesting perspective on the American Civil War, Ang Lee's "Ride with the Devil" stars Tobey Maguire as Jack Roedel, a young man who joins a Southern militia and subsequently launches a series of guerrilla attacks upon Northern soldiers and sympathisers.Lee's films often feature characters who rebel against assigned roles or who struggle to break free of social constrictions. In "Devil", Roedel's a soft-spoken, timid kid who seems to want no part in the erupting Civil War. Indeed, it is only in response to the violence committed by Unionists, and the peer-pressure exerted by fellow Southerners, that Roedel takes up a sixshooter and starts killing Bluecoats. Like the hero of Lee's "Hulk", Roedel essentially morphs from a man to a beast, a six-shooter equipped Bushwacker who kills without batting an eyelid. What's odd about "Devil", though, is the subtly at which these changes occur. As the film progresses, Roedel shifts from a genteel kid to a killer and then back to a genteel family man. Similarly, a character called Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright) shifts from an outright slave to a man bound to an unspoken life-bond and finally to a free African American. Throughout the first half of "Devil", Holt is virtually invisible. And when he is addressed, it is often indirectly or in the form of a racial slur. Gradually, however, Lee brings Holt to the forefront of his picture. Holt questions why he is fighting for segregationists, racists and observes first hand the hypocrisies of the Confederate cause. The film then ends with Holt and Roedel addressing one another by their full personal names. In affirming their identities, both are asserting a freedom or sense of "self" not bound by place, time or ideology. But Lee knows this is but a feeble affirmation; his film ultimately asserts that identity is always subservient to history. One seldom owns "who" he "is"."Devil" is bookended by a pair of weddings. During the first, Roedel likens marriage to slavery, and chastises any man who'd wed a woman. Through a bizarre sequence of events, however, Roedel finds himself forced to marry the pregnant lover of a close friend. Ironically, it is this "enslaving wedding" which emancipates Roedel from the war. As husband and father he's thrust into a new role, a role which carries with it a clear set of pre-packaged actions; flee the conflict and protect his new family. In countless similar scenes, the sheer arbitrariness of history, identity and so belief and behaviour, is highlighted. Take sequences, for example, in which Roedel's rejection of the "beliefs" of his German American father have little to do with Roedel's understanding of Unionist causes, and more to do with an unspoken loyalty to his neighbours. These neighbours' hatred of Roedel – he's seen to be a "traitorous immigrant" - is likewise capricious; Roedel fights for the South, IS a Southerner, but they nevertheless hate him because of the "identity" of Roedel's German father. Unsurprisingly for a film preoccupied with how roles and rituals are unconsciously play-acted, "Ride with the Devil" systematically undercuts and subverts the expectations typically brought to films set in the American Civil War. Such films typically revel in the splendour of antebellum Southern life, unironically celebrating and sentimentalising the luxury and civility made possible by the horrors of chattel slavery. But Lee, though he also ignores any overt depictions of slavery, never romanticises either the North or South. Both "sides" are brutal, horrible, but both are also humanised and shown to be swept up in movements they don't quite understand. In several scenes, for example, we watch as Confederate militiamen go to lengths to exhibit proper etiquette (directed at both blacks and women), and yet in others we witness bloody raids, like one sequence in which Confederates massacre 180 civilians in Lawrence, Kansas. Such juxtapositions make it spookily clear how easy it is for social animals to "ride with devils". Everyone's swept up in something, and humans are rarely strong enough or smart enough to break chains of complicity.For all its attempts at "revisionism", though, "Ride with the Devil" is still quite tame. Lee's Civil War ultimately boils down to "good Unionists" and "evil, racist, Confederates". That both sides were acting with profit, greed and the interests of land owners – which "happened" to coincide with the abolition of slavery - is ignored. For all his revisionism, Lee ultimately offers an idealistic portrait of the times. The great film about the American Civil War is still yet to be made.8/10 – Excellent, and one of the better "westerns" (though set in "eastern" Mississippi) of the 1990s. See "Shenandoah", Pontecorvo's "Burn", "Hombre" and "The Beguiled". Worth two viewings.

This movie is about a group of Confederate Bushwhackers, guerrillas who were independently organized into groups of small bands, and the band shown is this movie is made up of friends Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), wealthy farmer George Clyde (Simon Baker of The Mentalist), and freed slave Daniel Holt (Jeffery Wright). Their band has a less friendly relationship with other Confederate bands due to Jake's German ancestry, his father had been a staunch abolitionist who served in the Union Army and most other German Missourians were abolitionists, and the inclusion of a former slave. They're given food and shelter by sympathetic local farmers and a young war widow, Sue Shelley (Jewel Kilcher), catches Jack's eye becoming his lover and pregnant with his child. During a brutal retaliatory action after Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas, Jack is injured and eventually dies. Jake and Daniel take Sue and flee Missouri eventually making their way West.This is a brutal disturbing movie about a previously untold, on film at least, part of the American Civil War where your enemy may have lived as far as the next farm. You couldn't be sure who were your friends were sometimes and the wrong beliefs may have gotten you lynched. It's easy to see that the Jake Roedel's character doesn't believe in the institution of slavery but rather the principles of freedom and independence. He goes along with the Bushwackers against his dad's wishes due to so many of his friends taking up their cause. His life changes and not all for the good with the choices he makes, but by the end he's made peace with the man he was and now is.

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. It stars Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Simon Baker, James Caviezel and Jewel. Music is by Mychael Danna and cinematography by Frederick Elmes."On the Western Frontier of Missouri, the American Civil War was fought not by armies, but by neighbours. Informal gangs of local Southern Bushwhackers fought a bloody and desperate Guerrilla war against the occupying Union Army and pro-Union Jayhawkers. Allegiance to either side was dangerous. But it was more dangerous still to find oneself caught in the middle"Made for $38 million and intended to be a sweeping epic for the summer blockbuster crowd, Ride with the Devil was a considerable financial flop. With a limited release both in America and abroad, the financial figures are hardly surprising. More so considering it was given next to no promotion by the distributors. Factor in a little controversy about the events featured in the story, some cuts made by the studio (Lee didn't have final cut) and a delay in home release formats because the distributor incredibly wanted Jeffrey Wright's presence removed from the cover art! Well you would be forgiven for thinking that the film has to be something of a stinker. Not so say I.Part rites of passage drama, part reflective war movie, Ang Lee's film is a grand film viewing experience. Dealing as it does with the often forgotten part of the war down on the Missouri/Kansas border, where Lee also shoots on location, film manages to be both savage and lyrical in equal measure. The savagery comes with the fights, bloody, frenetic and high on potency, while the lyricism comes with the human relationships, internal conflicts and the political awareness of the men (boys) fighting for their cause. All given deft treatment by Schamus, whose screenplay contains crisp period dialogue and a narrative correctly showing that this part of the war was not just driven by racist Dixie's hell bent on revenge, violent lust and political allegiance, but often for family, land and rights. Picture is at pains to let us know the youth of the main characters, ramming home the point of boys forced to become men, killing machines, very quickly. Case in point, the culmination of the violence in the film that comes by way of the Lawrence Massacre, a tragic and upsetting slaughter that saw 180 people murdered under the leadership of a vengeful William Quantrill (John Ales). Lee and Schamus aren't interested in showing heroism in this particular war, they show it as futile, nasty and it leaves the taste of bile in the throat.From here the film slows considerably, as the lead characters withdraw from the action of war, to awakenings and friendships forming. It's here where Lee is at his best. No great director of action, as evidenced by the previously mentioned Lawrence Massacre; which lacks the cutting edge to really grab us by the throat and never let go, but for human interest aspects and bucolic scenes with characters framed within, Lee owes film fans absolutely nothing. The latter of which he is aided considerably by Elmes' widescreen photography. Ulrich and pop star Jewel nicely handle their parts, he puts a confident swagger into Jack Bull Chiles, she is tender and unassuming in the pivotal female role of Sue Lee Shelley. Caviezel gives Black John Ambrose a brooding menace, while Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is on overdrive as sadistic loony Pitt Mackeson. But it's with Maguire and Wright that the acting plaudits go. Maguire has arguably never been better, he gives Jake Roedel an effective sensitivity as a virginal boy receives a violent initiation into manhood. Wright is sublime, said to be one of his favourite performances, Wright as freed slave Daniel Holt is the heart beat of the film. Conveying most of the good traits available to man, Holt fights not just out of loyalty to his friend George Clyde (Baker), but to gain ultimate catharsis in is life. It's a beautiful measured turn from Wright, and it deserves more appreciative attention. The last third of it may be too talky for some, and a couple of dangling narrative threads left unanswered stop it from being a masterpiece. But it's close to being just that, a savage, beautiful and lyrical movie. The stupid studio execs had no idea: Putz's. 9/10