THE NEWTON BOYS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Lying somewhere between a Western and
a gangster film, THE NEWTON BOYS tells the story of
a five-year bank-robbing spree of a family gang,
culminating in the biggest train robbery in United
States History. An odd film for Richard Linklater
to make, but entertaining, if a bit formless. The
film does have a good feel for 1919-1924 setting.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
Neither Sifakis's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CRIME nor Nash's BLOODLETTERS AND BAD MEN seems to know the Newtons existed. What research I tried to do before seeing the film turned up nothing. But the film turns up some corroborating evidence that the story must have at the very minimum some truth. Apparently the Newton Gang were the most successful bank robbers in American history. From 1919 to 1925 this Texas-based gang robbed banks all over the country, eighty in all, though their biggest job was the three-million-dollar train robbery in Rondout, Illinois.
With Andy Warhol being dead, it is hard to imagine a director less likely to make an atmosphere-heavy period film than Richard Linklater, director of Generation X films like SLACKER. Nevertheless, Linklater breaks from his mold and does a fair job of recreating America of the early 1920s. And ironically his Generation X serves him well when showing members of the gang in their casual moments relaxing in postures you would never see in a Bogart or Cagney gangster film.
Willis Newton (played by Matthew McConaughey) is newly out of prison where he was railroaded for a crime he did not commit. What particularly galls him is that friends and neighbors willingly perjured themselves to abet the railroading. He decides really to turn to crime, stealing from the banks and implicitly from the insurance companies who, he rationalizes, are all crooks anyway. After helping someone else with a daylight robbery he decides it is safer to plan his own crimes and to rob banks only at night.
Soon Willis is bringing his brothers in to assist him in his robberies. Realizing that he knows how to open a square-door safe but not a round-door one, he has a bank manager list for him all the banks he knows of that have square-door safes, a list that contains banks all over the country. The film takes a very whimsical look at their crimes. These are very clearly lucky amateurs who do not know what they are doing, as we see in several comic scenes. They seem to have an incredible run of luck, neither killing anybody nor being killed themselves. Willis is the serious planner, brothers Jess (Ethan Hawke) and Dock (Vincent D'Onofrio) are in it just for the wild times. Joe (Skeet Ulrich) is the youngest and most thoughtful of the boys. Rounding out the gang is Glasscock (Dwight Yoakam).
McConaughey clearly provides what acting interest there is in the film and he gives the only performance that is above being just adequate. He is a little too handsome and polished for the role. The viewer knows this because of the very intelligent device of having interviews with the real-life Joe and Willis play with the credits--in the 1970s Willis was interviewed in a documentary and Joe appeared on the "Tonight Show" in 1980. The big surprise is how under-utilized Vincent D'Onofrio is. He is a fine actor and should have gotten a meatier role.
The story of the Newton Boys is apparently a neglected chapter of American crime. I cannot verify the accuracy of the film but I can say it was entertaining. I would rat it 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
In the film there is considerable mention square-door safes and round-door safes. The Newtons say they can open square-door safes but not the round-door ones. In order to decide what banks they will rob, they need a list of banks with square-door safes. What is this all about? Well, a square-door safe has a (rectangular) door. It is like the door to your home, only it is made of steel so it is a lot stronger. But it is still held in place by bolts and it is possible to get behind the door and sheer the bolt, possibly by blowing the whole door off its hinges. A round-door safe does not have hinges. The door is a disk with threads around the edge. The door is a separate piece which screws out of the safe. (In the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS the ports on the Martian spacecraft use the same principle. Remember Paul Birch's line "It's the damnedest thing the way that's unscrewin'.") In place a round screw-in door is just as secure as any other wall of the safe. There is no way you can get explosive behind it. At the time of THE NEWTON BOYS round-door safes (usually in spherical safes called "cannonballs") were absolutely secure. Cannonball safes were eventually defeated, but only by ignoring the opening mechanism and cutting right through the wall.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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