The Newton Boys is a Richard Linklater Period Piece Based on a True Story about a group of Depression-era desperadoes famous for the large number of banks they robbed and for how they never killed a single person in the process (although not always for lack of trying). The movie follows the Newton Brothers — Willis (Matthew McConaughey), Jess (Ethan Hawke), Joe (Skeet Ulrich), and Dock (Vincent D'Onofrio) — in their journey from honest Oklahoma working men, to bank robbers, to Mafia associates, while also paying some attention to Willis Newton's love life and the brothers' efforts to find a life outside of crime . Dwight Yoakam also appears as Brentwood Glasscock, an explosives expert and the only non-family member of the gang.
Tropes:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Jess Newton (one of the last gang members to be captured) buries his cut of the Train Job loot in the desert while he and his taxi driver are both drunk and neither of them can remember where to find it afterward. Willis is not amused.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Joe Newton is nineteen in 1920, while his oldest brother Willis was born in 1899 in real life and Dock and Jess were born in the 1890s and are also more confident and assertive than Joe.
- Badass Bystander: The gang experiences quite a bit of interference from heroic citizens when they try to simultaneously rob three different pairs of Canadian bank couriers as they leave a money exchange.
- When Willis Newton's shotgun briefly jams, the two middle-aged bank couriers he's holding at gunpoint manage to wrestle his shotgun away just as he fixes the problem, forcing him to shoot one man in the shoulder with his sidearm.
- Willis's eldest brother Dock is forced to pistol-whip both of the couriers he's fighting, and one of them pulls a gun on him. Then a young doorman watching from a nearby doorway jumps onto his back and tries to choke him. By the time Dock overpowers the doorman, the armed courier has recovered enough to shoot after him, and a well-dressed bystander tackles Dock to keep him from shooting back at the courier.
- Jess Newton, ends up with one of the couriers he held up grabbing onto his leg. Even after being pistol-whipped multiple times, the man refuses to let go until another courier runs over to take up the struggle with Jess. That man puts Jess in a headlock before Joe, the final Newton brother, races up to knock him out.
- Several people throw glass and ceramic objects from second and third-story windows at the brothers' accomplice, Brent Glasscock, causing him to retreat.
- When a police car arrives on the scene, the fleeing Newtons disable it with a gunshot, and a cop standing on the running board is sent roughly tumbling onto the street. He fires a shot from the ground that hits their car. The Newtons return fire, injuring the man in the side, but he is mostly unaffected and keeps shooting at them until they make it out of range.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Slim is introduced as a big-city gangster who (along with Glasscock) gets Willis involved in his first bank robbery. Slim is wounded and captured after the robbery takes an Epic Fail turn, causing Willis and Glasscock to realize that daylight bank robberies are too prone to error and that breaking in at night is a smarter move. It seems like this is the extent of Slim's role, but he reappears near the end of the film, several years later, having been released from prison and started working for the organized rackets. He then recruits Glasscock and the Newton brothers for a fateful, lucrative train robbery which turns out to be their last job.
- Cowboy: Joe and Jess Newton are ranch hands and horse tamers who usually wear cowboy hats and dusters and are content enough with their jobs that it takes Willis a while to convince them to join him robbing banks. They resume that lifestyle after the gang's dissolution.
- Demolitions Expert: Glasscock is good at handling nitroglycerin, a skill he primarily uses to blow open bank vaults.
- Dirty Cop: The Chicago cops torture the members of the Newton Gang whom they capture, but then agree to release them in exchange for a big bribe, although the FBI foils that.
- Happily Married: Glasscock's wife Abbie knows about his career as a bank robber and they have a stable relationship and active sex life that never suffers any problems throughout the film.
- Men of Sherwood:
- The Canadian bank messengers whom the brothers ambush during a money drop put up a fierce fight and almost capture the brothers and recover the money before being non-fatally injured.
- The local cops are surprisingly tough and competent, and one of them keeps shooting after the gang even after being wounded twice.
- Retired Outlaw: After one Time Skip, the Newton Gang tries to stop robbing banks and use their cached loot to become honest oilmen. They return to crime after the owners of the neighboring wells tap into their oil reserves and suck them dry. After the gang members are finally captured but get off with short sentences, Glasscock changes his name and gets into the dried goods business, Jess and Joe return to being cowboys, Willis becomes a nightclub and restaurant owner, and Dock works menial jobs. Willis and Dock are suspected of a few robberies and other crimes decades later, though.
- Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: FBI agent Aldrich pursues the Newton Gang but doesn't display any abrasiveness or No Sympathy moments. He does a good Sherlock Scan to expose the inside man who helped plan the Train Job and offers the brothers a good deal in exchange for their cooperation after finally capturing them.
- Train Job: The Newton Gang (who have mainly just broken into struggling banks after hours up until that point), some Chicago racketeers, and a Corrupt Bureaucrat rob a mail train carrying $3 million, their biggest score ever. They block the tracks for a night time robbery and get away with the money, but Brent Glasscock accidentally shoots Dock Newton and taking Dock to a doctor gets everyone else captured.
- True Companions: Glasscock and the Newton Brothers spend years working together, and he's distraught when he accidentally wounds Dock. They all make a deal to cooperate with the cops together.
