The Unfabulous Newton Boys By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 27, 1998

Matthew McConaughey is one of "The Newton Boys." (20th Century Fox) Director: Richard Linklater Cast: Matthew McConaughey; Skeet Ulrich; Ethan Hawke; Vincent D'Onofrio; Gail Cronauer; Julianna Margulies; Dwight Yoakam Running Time: 2 hours For brief nudity, mild profanity and some violence

The tale it tells is true, but has never been told before. Hmmmm – could there be a reason, do you suppose?

There were four Newton brothers, Willis, Joe, Jess and Dock, Texas cowboys and farmhands, who decided in 1919 that existence atop a horse or crouched under cotton plant No. 4,568 in a field of 12,908 cotton plants wasn't exactly the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Plus, it was hard on the back. So instead they opened a bank robbery franchise, stealing millions over the next few years, losing most of it in the few holes in Texas that didn't have oil at the bottom. They went about their business mostly at night, blowing off the doors of safes and fleeing with the loot.

Bonnie and Clyde or Johnny Dillinger and his pal Baby Face they weren't, which is perhaps why their reputations languished. They were more like slacker crooks, who never meant anybody any harm, never killed a soul and rarely had to pull their guns. So right away you see the problem: It's a story without much drama. I mean, how exciting is it when the 10th safe blows up?

Director-screenwriter Richard Linklater – he did "Dazed and Confused" and "Before Sunrise" – hopes to substitute beauty for drama and charm for excitement. Willis, the dominant member and "brains" (the term is used advisedly) behind the group, is meant to embody both. He's played by Matthew McConaughey, that statuesque native Texan whom somebody has declared a movie star, presumably the same person who declared Gwyneth Paltrow one, too. McConaughey is a young man who goes about behind Paul Newman's face while spouting his lines in Audie Murphy's voice. And his Willis is the charming one, a con man and angle mechanic, slick as 10W-40. McConaughey may commit some actual acting in the performance, something he hasn't been called on to do before. But the character only goes so far, and no further, and when he's teamed, for romantic fizz, with the gal of his dreams, and she's played at high drone by Julianna Margulies, you're thinking: Whose bright idea was this?

The film lacks a drive shaft. One would think that a story of bank robbers would be constructed as a pursuit, and would draw suspense off the cat-and-mouse games between the law and the robbers. But there is no pursuit, so there's no cat-and-mouse; there's only mouse and mouse as brother Joe (Skeet Ulrich) betrays quivers of conscience while brother Jess (Ethan Hawke, his delicate sensitivity, as well as his performance, lost behind a ten-gallon hat and a handlebar mustache) tries to pick up gals. And where is all this action set? Why, in the last of the red-hot-mama towns, wide-open and crazed Omaha. (Yes, I agree: This is the best film ever set in Omaha.)

If there's any pursuit of these not-so-bad boys, it's represented by the old Peckinpah regular Bo Hopkins, his hair dyed inexplicably blond, as a particularly avuncular FBI agent. And what FBI was that? It sure wasn't the FBI that produced Melvin Purvis and gunned-down Johnny D. and Baby Face. This is an FBI of genteel old gentlemen in Col. Sanders suits who are wryly amused at everything.

Toward the end, the thing picks up a bit. A Toronto job turns violent – nobody is killed but several are pistol-whipped, and Linklater thinks this is amusing rather than grotesque, but the sequence at least crackles. And soon enough the boys are trying their hands at a big last job, a Chicago train heist. Again the movie stirs, particularly when well-laid plans go astray, and one brother catches a faceful of bullets as various law enforcement agents are closing in.

But generally, "The Newton Boys" just wends and pokes. And it may be too Texasy for its own good. It loves the kind of Texas needling and joshing between the brothers and their subtle Texas superiority to the various Midwesterners. It even evokes the great Texas Ranger Frank Hamer with a knowing wink to the exactly two people in the audience who know who he is. It's a movie for, by and about Texas, made by Texans, in Texas (they never went to Omaha or Toronto or Chicago). Death and Texas may be unavoidable, but you do not have to see "The Newton Boys" unless you want to.