Metacritic reviews

What The Newton Boys lacks in dramatic definition, it more than compensates for with its underlying intelligence and visual luster.

A fast-paced, entertaining motion picture that replaces gritty tension with a lightly-dramatic character interaction that occasionally borders on straight comedy.

Linklater reaches for the sky with this film, but the result is mixed.

If Mr. Linklater is not entirely at ease with action sequences (or with the obligatory having-fun montage once the brothers become successful), he still makes this (after ''Before Sunrise'' and ''Suburbia'') another admirable directorial stretch.

An extremely handsome production that meticulously evokes the 1920s, and a likable male-dominated cast, headed by Matthew McConaughey in his best screen performance to date, only partially compensate for a story that's too diffuse and lacks a discernible point of view that would make it dramatically engaging.

The film chronicles their criminal career in a low-key, meandering way; we're hanging out with them more than we're being told a story.

On the flimsy wings of this familiar fairy tale, Linklater tries to fly himself a movie, dressing up the quartet (and the strapping he-men cast to portray them) in the audience-friendly vestments of picaresque charm.

In his true-life film about four brothers who robbed banks out West during the late teens and early '20s, Richard Linklater seems to achieve the impossible: He makes Ethan Hawke bearable.

You have seen this movie before, every morsel of it.

Director Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused") should have taken a cue from the music -- the film needs a lot more snap.