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Perhaps it was sunk by the fad casting of Jewell, who talks just like she sings. Or the presence of Skeet Ulrich, who rightly or wrongly is perceived on the downside of a fad look, to the extent that at last year’s MTV Movie Awards Chris Rock introduced Johnny Depp as “the rich man’s Skeet Ulrich.” Or the fact that it was released a few weeks before Tobey Maguire’s fad took off with Cider House Rules (he won’t have recognition woes anytime soon, now that he’ll be playing Spiderman). Whatever, this carefully layered Civil War, saga (directed, coincidentally, by Ang Lee, who lensed Sense and Sensibility) promptly vanished in the holiday rush when released last November.
Too bad. It spins an enjoyable yarn, rather low-keyed except for its battle sequences, of conflict and loyalty on the Missouri frontier. Down through the years we’ve become inured to the “brother vs. brother” adage so easily used to describe the bloody War Between the States that it’s easy to dismiss how un-cliche the phrase actually can be. This film brings home the fact that, in a different century, Republicans and Democrats would be massing troops to kill people and burn stuff rather than holding conventions. Maguire (who was also in Lee’s Ice Storm) and Ullrich are excellent as friends fighting in a desperate guerilla campaign even though they’re not always sure their rapidly vanishing heritage continues to be worth risking life and limb. Jewell, meanwhile, doesn’t show up until the movie is half over, and then does little but play frontier hussy and set up a sub-plot. Much more exceptional is Jeffrey Wright (Shaft’s gonzo drug dealer Peoples Hernandez) as a freed slave fighting for the South, lending much to the film’s penchant for upsetting the usual archetypes.
Some may find the pervasive, casual use of flowery period vernacular distracting, but to me the script by James Schamus (who wrote Ice Storm), from Daniel Woodrell’s novel Woe to Live On, is this movie’s chief strength. Hearing characters, most of whom are illiterate, speak with such fluency and conviction is just one of the amiable ironies it has to offer. B
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