THE NEWTON BOYS (20th Century Fox) Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dwight Yoakam, Julianna Margulies. Screenplay: Richard Linklater, Claude Stanush and Clark Lee Walker, based on the book by Stanush. Producer: Anne Walker McBay. Director: Richard Linklater. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (frequent profanity, violence) Running Time: 122 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I've got to be honest with you: if I were producing a "true crime" bio-pic, Richard Linklater would not be my first choice as director. In fact, I'm not sure he'd make the top fifty. This is, after all, the man who chronicled the meandering SLACKER culture, the man who followed DAZED AND CONFUSED 1970s youth in their hazy misadventures, the man who let two young lovers talk the night away BEFORE SUNRISE. Not exactly the stuff of which blazing shootouts and narrow getaways are made, is it?
As one might expect, there is an amiable, unhurried pace to Richard Linklater's THE NEWTON BOYS. The surprise is that it turns out to be one of the film's most appealing qualities. Based on Claude Stanush's non-fiction book, THE NEWTON BOYS tells the story of the most successful gang of bank robbers in American history: Texas siblings Willis (Matthew McConaughey), Jess (Ethan Hawke), Joe (Skeet Ulrich) and Dock Newton (Vincent D'Onfrio), along with their explosives expert Brentwood Glasscock (Dwight Yoakam). In the early 1920s, the five men went on an unparalleled spree throughout the West and Midwest, working at night and reaping the rewards of the last remaining easily-accessed safes in left in the country.
From the opening credits, it is clear that Linklater is aiming for an old-fashioned whimsy in his telling of the tale. The title cards are styled after silent films, with "The Players" introduced in sienna-tinted head shots, tipping their hats to the camera. THE NEWTON BOYS generally paints its protagonists as light-hearted, almost casual outlaws, polite young men who happened to be very good at robbing banks and milked one effective modus operandi for all it was worth. The script (by Linklater, Stanush and Clark Lee Walker) shows little interest in digging deep into the characters' psyches or exposing the gritty violence of the Old West's final days. Though the climactic train robbery features a bit of bloodshed, far more typical is a scene where a bungled daylight heist turns into a comedy of errors resulting in nothing worse than a couple of flesh wounds. Even the obligatory montage sequence, spinning newspaper headlines and all, is edited with a less frantic sense of urgency than you might expect.
THE NEWTON BOYS is such a lightweight bit of history that it sometimes threatens to float away entirely whenever there's not a robbery going on. The characters are energetically portrayed by the top-notch cast, but they're little more than a token trait a piece -- Joe is the Religious One, Brentwood is the Cautious One, Jess is the Cocky Drunken One, Dock is...well, the _other_ Cocky Drunken One. Only McConaughey is given a bit more to work with, playing Willis as a wronged man rationalizing his lawlessness as payback to the world. Even then, the attempts to flesh out his life -- a romance with a single mother (Julianna Margulies), ill-fated attempts to funnel his ill-gotten gains into legitimate businesses -- feel half-hearted and only sporadically effective.
Still, there's something undeniably charming about THE NEWTON BOYS, some intangible alchemy between the actors' obvious enjoyment of their roles and a story with no greater agenda than spotlighting a previously unknown bit of Americana. Two hours may be a bit too much time to support the substance of THE NEWTON BOYS, but if you've indulged Linklater's episodic films in the past, you probably won't be disappointed by his willingness to wander down the side roads of a story. Not a bad choice at all, as it turns out, for a story about some nice young fellas who just happen to rob banks.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Newtonian out-laws: 7.
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