Ride With The Devil

Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jewel Kilcher, Jeffrey Wright (1999). This is one of the best portrayals of the American Civil War from the unusual angle of the bushwhackers - the freeraiding desperados who harried and hurt the Northern foe by adopting guerrilla tactics and, abandoning family and home, living rough for most of the year. It gives a new meaning to the word 'brotherhood'.

The period is grippingly realistic and so, too, is the language, pitched somewhere between the stateliness of the King James Bible and the courtliness of Southern gentility. The brutality of war is palpable.

Despite all of which - and especially its being directed by the Taiwanese immigrant talent Ang Lee whose recent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has hit the $100 million mark - the film fell utterly flat in the States and everywhere else. No stars, maybe? Or the presence of a gallant slave who chooses to fight on the Southern side?

Political incorrectness took its toll.

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