gavin6942
The story of the Newton gang, the most successful bank robbers in history, thanks to their good planning and minimal violence.Although I am more well-versed than the average person on organized crime and the gangster era, I confess I had not heard of the Newton Gang prior to watching this film. This may be because they were from Texas, which falls outside of traditional history... but either way, this is a hole that needs rectifying.The film is excellent. Apparently reviews were mixed and it did not do very well, today considered one of Richard Linklater's failures. That is a shame, because it has a solid cast (even a rarely-seen Skeet Ulrich) and a fun, adventurous plot. Hopefully following the Oscar buzz with "Boyhood" (2014), people will go back and revisit some of Linklarer's work. It is not all amazing, but most of it is worth checking out.
Michael O'Keefe
History is history and Hollywood is well...Hollywood. This is a fact-based drama that chronicles the exploits of the bank robbing Newton brothers(Matthew McConaughey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ethan Hawke and Skeet Ulrich)who robbed over eight banks from Texas to Toronto in the 20's and 30's. Along with them a friend(Dwight Yoakam)who knew his way with nitro.This makes for exciting explosions on screen with clouds of money to go with gunshot blasts and whining getaway cars. The prolonged career in crime is capped off with a three million dollar mail train heist outside Chicago. This finally landed the boys in a court room and behind bars. By all means don't walk out on the closing credits for you get to find out what happened to each of the principle players. Also in the cast are: Julianna Margulies, Charles Gunning, Chloe Webb and Casey McAuliffe. There is the claim that the Newton boys never killed a soul during their robbing the bigger thieves...the banks.
Maw7391
Pitiful! I walked out of this movie and chastised my roommate for having dragged me to it! The thirty minutes that I saw showed no acting whatsoever. All it showed was a bunch of young actors that look good to chicks acting like a bunch of country hicks a "whoopin' and a hollerin'".
TxMike
What makes "The Newton Boys" so interesting is that it is based on a predominantly true story. Lead by Willis Newton (Matthew McConaughey, a Texan) who had big dreams of drilling for oil in the boom years after WW I, the 4 brothers used explosives to crack open safes all over the USA and Canada and robbed the banks. Willis' rationale, "We're helping to keep insurance companies in business. If there are no bank robberies then there will be no need for insurance." For reasons I don't understand at all, round safes cannot be opened like rectangular safes, so they eventually had to resort to train robbery. They were eventually caught, tried, and convicted. After serving a little time (max. 5 years) most of them retired to Uvalde, Texas, a small town west of San Antonio and in the "texas Hill Country" so popular with motorcyclists. Most of them lived long lives and died in Uvalde.Julianna Margolies was excellent as Willis' love interest. They eveidently stayed together into old age, even though they never married.Pretty good film.
AD
