Introduced by Chris Berry

With an almost anthropological precision, Ang Lee recreates a Civil War far from Hollywood myths of the Old South; in this world, romance and heroism are hard to come by, and the young protagonists - played in credible and understated style by Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, and Jewel - are not gallant gentlemen and gliding belles but children grown up too fast. "A complex and divisive time in American history is painted in admirably expressive shades of gray in Ride with the Devil....Ang Lee has made a brutal but sensitively observed film about the fringes of the Civil War, about the families and neighbors who were divided among themselves along the Missouri-Kansas border....In the anarchic world of Southern-sympathizing Bushwhackers and pro-Union Jayhawkers, it is never easy to know who might be ally or enemy, and the conflict is more often personal and haphazard than militarily organized" (Todd McCarthy, Variety).