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Sarah Barnett of Culture@Home holds forth Ride with the Devil as a film that pushes beyond familial loyalty to include a broader understanding of camaraderie. Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) are initially "drawn into the war when Jack's father is killed during a Northern raid . …[Later,] Ride with the Devil offers glimmers of humanity in the midst of cruelty. As the only literate member of gang, Jake is coerced into reading stolen Northern letters. The letters reveal the human face of their opponents, causing the men to question why they're fighting." Overstreet, too, is enthusiastic about the way the film breaks down the us-versus-them conventions of ordinary battle epics. "Ride with the Devil is not a war film that will make you cheer for one side or the other. It's a film far more interested in telling something true. … War is something about which we should never cheer. It should always leave us hollowed out, grieving for those on both sides. … There is a better [way to present battlefield epics] than merely shooting your enemies and having a showdown with those who persecute you."

Steve Lansingh is editor of thefilmforum.com, a weekly Internet magazine devoted to Christianity and the cinema.

See Christianity Today's earlier Film Forum postings for these other movies in the box-office top ten: X-men, Scary Movie, The Perfect Storm, Pokemon:The Movie, The Kid, The Patriot, and Chicken Run.

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July (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44