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The Newton Boys Movie Review

The Newton Boys is a 1998 crime comedy film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Matthew McConaughey and Ethan Hawke among others. It’s a forgettable flick.

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“This isn’t a real job.

It is real. It is real fun“

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The film revolves around the most successful group of train and bank robbers in the United States, the Newton Gang, which carried around a hundred robberies without ever killing anyone. And that’s the key element here – no killing. That has to be the film’s most detrimental element as it thus lacks any suspense or danger to it. It’s just too lightweight is all I’m saying.

The ensemble cast here is very strong of course as it has so many famous actors in it. I found Matthew McConaughey the best one. This was probably his strongest role up until this point in his career and he’s the highlight of the entire movie. I found Ethan Hawke quite forgettable. He usually gets to play much interesting and memorable roles than this one. All of the others are quite solid with Skeet Ulrich being the most interesting player.

Many found the central romance overly stalling and to be the weakest part of the movie, but I personally disagree. In my book, those scenes strengthened the movie and gave it purpose and depth. The best moments to be had in the movie are obviously those concerning some type of conversation having in mind that Linklater writes dialogue like a pro. And I surely wanted more of such scenes.

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The Newton Boys is very long for such a simple story, thus feeling quite repetitive for most of its runtime. I would have liked to have seen more memorable action/thriller sequences as the film fails at being a crime film so hard. It’s much better as a historical dramedy with particularly strong technical choices. The costumes, sets and score are all great, but the standout is its meticulous attention to period detail that resulted in that wonderful opening credits scene that emulated 20s silent flicks so charmingly. The movie unfortunately never again reached that level of cinematic brilliance.

The Newton Boys has a great ensemble cast, terrific attention to period detail and a wonderful opening credits sequence that emulates 20s silent flicks so well, but most of the movie is forgettable and it lacks any feeling of suspense to it. It’s also repetitive and overlong.

My Rating – 3

You can get The Newton Boys on Amazon.