Ride with the Devil

Ang Lee is a director of many facets. He has mastered the modern comedy of manners, the costume drama and the martial arts adventure. With Ride with the Devil he finds himself back in the American Civil War, on which Lee and his screenwriter James Schamus offer a different perspective.

The film is about the guerrilla war between the Northern and Southern states. The protagonist is Jacob Roedel, a Southern lad who wants to defend his home region against the Union troops, but he is of German descent, and his father sides with the North. He joins a guerrilla group, but slowly discovers that many of the men he rides with are no more honourable than the marauding Northerners. He does have some loyal friends he can rely on, though, but the guerrilla struggle demands many sacrifices.

The singer Jewel has a leading role as the pretty Sue Lee Shelley, who has been widowed after only two weeks of marriage. Jacob's childhood friend Jack Bull falls in love with her and gets her pregnant, but he dies before he has had the chance to marry her. Suddenly Jacob is left with an enormous responsibility.

Ride with the Devil is an entertaining and nuanced western, which could nonetheless do with a little tightening. Two hours and a quarter is rather on the long side.