Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37295 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-07-19
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Newton Boys were the most successful bank robbers in the history of the United States. They never killed anyone, never snitched and only robbed banks (just bigger thieves, in their opinion), until their final deal, which was a botched train robbery for $3 million. Engagingly played by Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich and Vincent D'Onofrio, the Boys don't have the kind of flaws of more brutal criminals that make for more volatile dramas. The film ambles along in a leisurely way to tell its story of the Newtons' bank-robbing career, with an ever-present air of reverent Americana. This may make some viewers impatient and cause a glow in others. It seems like a departure for director Richard Linklater (Slacker and Dazed and Confused)--a costumer to be sure but Linklater's deliberately amiable pace perfectly balances the Boys' personalities. You may wander into this movie and feel right at home. The golden-hued cinematography of Peter James (Driving Miss Daisy) adds a level of comfort that makes everything warm-like. The end credits intercut archival footage of two of the real-life Newton boys toward the end of their lives, one from a 1980 appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. --Jim Gay

Synopsis
Texas filmmaker Richard Linklater's lighthearted Western tells the true story of the Newton brothers, who are regarded as the most successful bank robbers in the history of the United States. The time is the early 1920s and the place is Texas. When Willis Newton (Matthew McConaughey) returns from a four-year stint in prison, he quickly falls into a life of bank robbing. Excited by the prospects of stealing even more money, he recruits his three brothers--the charming Jess (Ethan Hawke), the sensitive Joe (Skeet Ulrich), and the brutish Dock (Vincent D'Onofrio)--and ace safecracker Brentwood Glasscock (Dwight Yoakam) to help him ravage the country's banks, as long as no one gets hurt. Along the way, Willis meets and falls in love with Louise Brown (Julianna Margulies), a single mother living in Omaha. Eventually, greed gets the better of the gang and they set their sights on a federal train that is transporting three million dollars in cash and bonds. Linklater's film is an affable and sweet affair, with a good-natured tone that greatly mimics the Newton brothers themselves. Linklater alumni McConaughey and Hawke headline the all-star cast, while music by the Bad Livers keeps the atmosphere breezy throughout.

Customer Reviews

These Newton did not discover gravitation
The film is very banal. Bank robbers and postal train robbers, déjà vu, blasé, passé. Nothing particularly interesting or exciting. Yet the film has a slight flaw that makes it maybe of some interest. These bank robbers and postal train robbers survived the whole business in 1924, got through the trial with rather light sentences and they most of them died of old age fifty or so years later after giving, for some of them, some TV interviews about that profession of their young age. Then that was not a film but a fictionalized documentary. Shucks! Those who got the heaviest sentences were the few real profiteers who were the real organizers behind those young cowboys who got misled, by their own dream, into getting by force the money they desired to have. But the worst part in all that story is that they got caught on their last venture, the postal train robbery, because one of the gang of brothers shot another member of that brotherly gang because he did not stick to what he was supposed to do, went on the other side of the train and got frightened by someone who did not have the identifying hat they were all supposed to wear. A mistake, another mistake and the whole venture came to a stop, though they apparently did not recuperate all the money, neither the authorities, not the Newton Boys, because the part that was hidden away by one of them was done so under the influence of alcohol, not the money of course, but the Newton Boy who was supposed to bury it and he could never, so he says at least, remember where it was. If you are not afraid of the strong cowboy Texan accent of these boys, you can watch it and entertain yourself with the dream of what you could do with three million 1924 dollars. I guess you would favor buying a new hybrid car to be economical and nice with the planet.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines