Ride with the Devil (1999)
Directed by Ang Lee
Friends Jake and Jack Bull join up with Civil War guerrilla fighters, yet after the realities of war set in, they must decide what honor truly means.
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What critics compared Ride with the Devil to
They're an odd match: the comic book scribe extraordinaire (creator of "The Hulk," "Spider-Man," "X-Men," "Daredevil" and many others) and the director of a string of finely-crafted but diverse films (from "The Wedding Banquet" and "Sense and Sensibility" to "Ride With the Devil" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon").
Chameleonic director Ang Lee (he of English period drama "Sense and Sensibility," Civil War epic "Ride With the Devil" and philosophical chop-socky "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") marries human drama with comic book styling surprisingly well in this first act and throughout the film.
It would be difficult here to overemphasize the contribution of cinematographer Frederick Elmes and editor Tim Squyres (both veterans of Lee's Kansas City-lensed "Ride With the Devil"), whose talents threaten to turn this pulp silliness into high art.
His early family-oriented Taiwan films like "The Wedding Banquet" and "Eat Drink Man Woman" were followed by his adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," family angst in "The Ice Storm," Civil War drama in "Ride with the Devil," martial arts/fantasy in"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and, now, he enters the stratified realm of the comic book super hero with Stan Lee's "The Incredible Hulk."
Each of his previous films -- the "Father Knows Best" saga of the Asian trilogy, the Regency drawing-rooms of Sense and Sensibility, the Watergate-era suburbia of The Ice Storm, the Civil War of Ride With the Devil, the martial rituals of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- revolves around some form of domestic strife.
The screenplay, taken from a novel by Daniel Woodrell—who also penned the novel Ang Lee used for his Missouri-set Western Ride With the Devil—has a tarter edge to it, and a great deal more plotting.
He had great success with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and has explored dramatic subjects excellently with his "The Ice Storm" and even made a western called "Ride with the Devil."
Brokeback Mountain is an introspective film, but not, thankfully, an inert film like Lee's Ride with the Devil .
He's been to the American west before with Ride with the Devil, a film about Missouri settlers struggling to regain the peace of hearth and home during the Civil War.
Taiwanese native but longtime American resident Ang Lee ("Ride With The Devil"/"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") is the assured director, who quietly shoots for getting all the details and nuances right and avoiding any unecessary shocks by making his gay romantic tale fit as a universal love story (assuming from the film's tremendous hype that the public already knows the kind of love scenes to expect and therefore shouldn't be shocked--though right-wing Christian fundamentalist activists might hurl verbal bricks at it from a distance).