Ride With the Devil

Loyalty can be an overrated virtue, especially when it comes in conflict with decency and common sense. Take the Civil War: did those on the Confederate side fight for slavery or for their family and friends? Or was it just the cooler clothes and hairstyles? This uncertainty between style and substance is one of the problems with Ang Lee's ambitious epic.

Set in the disputed border territory of Missouri, Lee's film recounts the adventures of a band of Bushwhackers -- pro-South guerrillas. Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) rides out of loyalty to his surrogate brother, John Bull (Skeet Ulrich), and despite (or because of) his anti-slavery German immigrant Pa. Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright) rides out of loyalty to his former owner and surrogate brother, George Clyde (Simon Baker), even though their quick-to-lynch sidekicks wouldn't hesitate to scalp him if he weren't "Clyde's nigger." Maybe it's just that the Bushwhackers sport flowing hair and coats in contrast to the other side's bad haircuts, beer bellies, and greasy suspenders.

Either way, the film's heroes take their time in growing cold to their cause of massacring pro-Union civilians (actually the atrocities on both sides beg comparisons with Kosovo and Chechnya). Part of this process is bland Sue Lee Shelley (Jewel) as domestic temptation, and she's not up to the task. Overlong, murky, but with flashes of visual inspiration more evident in Lee's The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility, this film needs less ride and more devil.

-- Peter Keough