The Newton Boys

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. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

-- Alicia Potter