The Newton Boys: ruthless bandits, not lovable folk heroes

The Newton Boys (1998)
Director: Richard Linklater
Entertainment grade: C+
History grade: B+

Brothers Willis, Dock, Jess and Joe Newton of Uvalde County, Texas, formed the Newton gang with other associates between 1919 and 1924. They claimed to have robbed 87 banks and six trains. Legend has it they never killed anyone in the process.

Crime

Willis Newton (Matthew McConaughey) robs the Bank of Boswell with two associates, Slim (Charles Gunning) and the splendidly named Brentwood Glasscock (played by the equally splendidly named Dwight Yoakam). It doesn’t go that well: they’re chased away by locals, Slim gets shot off his horse, and Willis has to escape by plunging into a river. In future, Willis and Glasscock conclude, they should avoid daytime holdups. Glasscock, a nitroglycerin expert, suggests they blow up safes at night. In 1919, when this scene is set, Willis Newton was 30 years old. He had established a criminal career of bank and train robbery as well as burglary, forgery and other offences. It was in 1920 that he and Glasscock set up their safebusting “business”, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Technology

The key to the Newton gang’s success was identifying square-door safes. Glasscock devised a nitroglycerin system detonated by a dynamite “cap” that would simply blow the door off. As the film correctly illustrates, this limited them to robbing smaller banks. By the 1920s, most larger banks in the US had gone over to round-door safes, which were harder to break into. Willis persuades an actual banker to give him a list of all the square-door safe banks in nearby states. “We promise never to rob your little bank,” he says with a winning smile – and it’s a deal. In real life, Willis did indeed acquire such a list from an official from the Texas Association of Bankers. Naughtily, the man sold it to him.

Money

Cruising around in a banana-yellow Studebaker he bought with his ill-gotten gains (the film is right that the gang always drove Studebakers or Cadillacs), Willis puts together a gang. It consists of his brothers Dock (Vincent D’Onofrio), Jess (Ethan Hawke) and Joe (Skeet Ulrich). Joe, the youngest, is the most earnest: “You’re talking about taking people’s money,” he says, horrified. “No,” replies Willis, “the bank’s money … We are just little thieves stealing from the big thieves. That’s all.” Joe isn’t convinced, and nor is an old woman living next to the bank they rob straight afterwards. “That’s my money in that bank!” she hollers at the Newtons. They threaten to blow her building up. Undeterred, she lets off a fire siren – but the boys get away.

Violence

Though the Newtons’ claim that they never actually killed anyone has not been conclusively disproved, they were violent criminals. The film prefers to portray them as lovable folk heroes, and it is right that witnesses at some of their robberies described them as surprisingly polite. Even so, it cannot disguise the fact that they did on occasion shoot, pistol-whip and beat their victims. It’s all very well to turn that into slapstick comedy on screen – but in real life, newspaper reports suggest that encounters with the Newtons could result in distinctly non-comic injuries. “Sure, we shot a few people, but we never killed a single man,” the real Willis Newton said later.

Justice

The Newton gang’s last and greatest heist was the Rondout train robbery, which took place near Chicago on 12 June 1924. The Newtons and Glasscock were involved; a corrupt postal inspector, William J Fahy (David Jensen), was their man on the inside. It was estimated that the gang took more than $2m, making this the biggest train robbery in US history at the time. The brothers were all caught and given fairly light sentences, as the film shows; Fahy took most of the blame. The Newton gang ceased to operate in 1924, but it does not appear they entirely learned their lesson. The real Dock was arrested in 1968, at the age of 77, in the act of robbing a bank. The real Willis was accused of involvement in another bank robbery in 1973, when he was 84 – but there was not enough evidence to arrest him.

Verdict

It hits an amiable tone and the period detail is beautifully observed – but The Newton Boys is too meandering a narrative, with too generic a cast of characters, to make for a gripping movie.