There's a telling moment near the end of the picture when Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright) tells Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) that he finally felt free when his good friend George Clyde (Simon Baker) died. Clyde became Holt's sponsor when his slave master died, but didn't have the means to also look after Holt's mother and sister. Holt's loyalty to Clyde and vice-versa made for a compelling character study of two men who became friends, one black and one white, during a period of the country's history when such a relationship was unimaginable.
The relationship among the four principals in the story falls along similar lines. It's through Jake Roedel's eyes however that one gets a sense that in a conflict in which neighbor turns against neighbor, there's almost never a right or wrong, but opponents who take sides solely by accident of birth. In that respect, Maguire's character goes against the grain somewhat; born of a German immigrant with strong Unionist tendencies, Jake takes up with the Southern cause because his upbringing took place in Missouri, and everything he knows about life makes him a Confederate sympathizer.
With the setting of the story taking place on the Kansas-Missouri border, it was only a matter of time before the name of William Quantrill came up. His role among the loose confederation of marauders and thugs known as the Bushwhackers had only a peripheral presence here, though the actual raid that took place in Lawrence, Kansas in 1863 was given prominent treatment. Much of what appears on screen offers a hint of the carnage they wrought on the community, but not so much the horror. The actual massacre left two hundred dead men and boys in a virtually defenseless community that fell victim to Quantrill's brutality.
That brutality makes it's mark on the nineteen year old Jake Roedel, who can barely comprehend what men of otherwise normal preoccupation are capable of doing to each other. His conflicted comment on what he witnessed is expressed as "just bad luck citizens finding out just how bad luck can be". Kind of simplistic actually, but as good a description as one can come up with when dealing with the horror and randomness of war's devastation.
The relationship among the four principals in the story falls along similar lines. It's through Jake Roedel's eyes however that one gets a sense that in a conflict in which neighbor turns against neighbor, there's almost never a right or wrong, but opponents who take sides solely by accident of birth. In that respect, Maguire's character goes against the grain somewhat; born of a German immigrant with strong Unionist tendencies, Jake takes up with the Southern cause because his upbringing took place in Missouri, and everything he knows about life makes him a Confederate sympathizer.
With the setting of the story taking place on the Kansas-Missouri border, it was only a matter of time before the name of William Quantrill came up. His role among the loose confederation of marauders and thugs known as the Bushwhackers had only a peripheral presence here, though the actual raid that took place in Lawrence, Kansas in 1863 was given prominent treatment. Much of what appears on screen offers a hint of the carnage they wrought on the community, but not so much the horror. The actual massacre left two hundred dead men and boys in a virtually defenseless community that fell victim to Quantrill's brutality.
That brutality makes it's mark on the nineteen year old Jake Roedel, who can barely comprehend what men of otherwise normal preoccupation are capable of doing to each other. His conflicted comment on what he witnessed is expressed as "just bad luck citizens finding out just how bad luck can be". Kind of simplistic actually, but as good a description as one can come up with when dealing with the horror and randomness of war's devastation.