Ride with the Devil is a 1999 American Revisionist Western film directed. It is directed by Ang Lee. The storyline was conceived from a screenplay written by James Schamus, based on a book entitled Woe to Live On, by author Daniel Woodrell. The events portrayed in the novel and film take place in Missouri, amidst escalating guerrilla warfare at the onset of the American Civil War.
《与魔鬼共骑》是1999年公映的美国剧情片电影,是由李安执导的一部好莱坞电影。根据丹尼尔·伍德瑞尔的小说《Woe to Live On》改编,剧本由詹姆斯·夏慕斯完成。小说和电影都反映了在南北战争时在密苏里不断升级的游击战。
Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles are friends in Missouri when the American Civil War breaks out. During the mayhem, Chiles’s father is murdered by Kansas Union Jayhawkers. The two men join the First Missouri Irregulars, also known as the Bushwhackers; informal units loyal to Missouri in 1861. They later meet George Clyde and former slave Daniel Holt, whose freedom Clyde has previously granted. The Bushwhackers battle Jayhawkers using guerrilla warfare tactics while trying to evade capture. The men manage to hide out in a coarsely-built shelter on the property of a pro-Confederacy family, the Evanses. A young widow in the household, Sue Lee Shelley, becomes romantically involved with Chiles. When Chiles dies of gangrenous wounds received during a skirmish, Roedel escorts Shelley to a refuge dwelling where another pro-Confederate kindred, the Browns family, reside. Following the collapse and destruction of a makeshift prison holding the female relatives of guerrillas, a complementary clan of Bushwhackers led by William Quantrill plot a revenge attack against the Union and raid Lawrence, Kansas.In the midst of the offense, a quarrel arises between Roedel and fellow Bushwhacker Pitt Mackeson. Roedel, a German American, was born in Germany but raised by his immigrant father in Missouri. He suffers from periodical anti-German suspicion from other Southerners, because the German population in the state is largely sympathetic to the Union. In an episode of hostility, Mackeson purposely shoots Roedel in the leg shortly after the raid on Lawrence, while retreating from a counterattack by Union forces. The perceived prejudice makes Roedel somewhat sympathetic to the plight faced by Holt, an African American coping with racism. Meanwhile, Shelley gives birth to Chiles’s daughter. Holt and Roedel, both wounded, recover at the same residence that took in Shelley occupied by the Browns folk. Under pressure from the kin who mistakenly think Roedel is the child’s father, Roedel marries Shelley in an abrupt wedding. At the close of the war, Roedel gives up being a Bushwhacker and takes his new family to California, while Holt leaves for Texas to find his long lost mother.
19世纪60年代,美国内战一触即发。1861年,美国成立了美利坚联盟国,南方人自恃经济力量的雄厚,许多南方人开始用游击战来挑动内战的敏感神经。堪萨斯州及密苏里州的边境,两个儿时玩伴杰格·罗德和杰克·布尔·柴斯不经意间卷入了战争。杰格是在密苏里州土生土长的德国裔,其父亲原本希望他支持北方军队,但是他却违背了父亲的意愿,和杰克一起加入了南方军队,他们在队长布莱克·约翰的领导下,和队友彼特·迈克森、乔治·克莱德、黑奴丹尼尔·赫特一起在边境地界开始了漫长的游击战争,直到寒冷冬季的来临。南方军队在游击战时,杰克认识了年轻貌美的寡妇寡妇苏·李·雪莱,苏刚刚因为战争失去丈夫,寂寞难耐,于是两人迅速坠入爱河,但是战争却没有能够给他们过上幸福甜蜜生活的机会,他们不得不东躲西藏,为生活奔走异乡,最后在南北战争结束时,他们开始组建了新生活。