[Sidebar] The Worcester Phoenix
March 27 - April 3, 1998
[Movie Reviews]
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The Newton Boys

[TheNewtonBoys] Director Richard Linklater, the king of the whiny but witty "hanging out" movie (Dazed and Confused, suburbia), at last introduces a Gen X ensemble with ambition to burn. As it happens, The Newton Boys is his weakest film yet.

Far from Linklater's usual turf of strip malls and tract housing, this banjo-pickin' 1920s Western resurrects the true story of America's most successful bank robbers, the Newton Boys (Matthew McConaughey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ethan Hawke, and Skeet Ulrich). As the brains behind this chisel-cheeked posse, McConaughey delivers a truly oily performance. In fact he's too slippery: even in the most mawkish fraternal moment, he sounds suspiciously glib.

Still, Linklater tips his 10-gallon hat to the genre with style, reveling in velvet-painting vistas, hoky opening credits, and near-sensual close-ups of the brothers' secret weapon, nitroglycerine. But for all its yee-haw antics and good-ol'-boy banter, this latest portrait of youth on the fringe is no Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's more like The Dukes of Hazzard.

-- Alicia Potter

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