The Newton Boys: Synopsis

THE NEWTON BOYS is the true story of America's most successful bank robbers. From 1919 to 1924, they robbed over eighty banks from Texas to Canada, capping their career with America's largest train robbery, a three million dollar mail train heist outside of Chicago. From a poor upbringing as cowboys and cotton farmers the brothers brought their frontier-born "code of the west" into the roaring twenties, considering themselves not gunfighters, but "businessmen." True to their aims, they never killed anyone in spite of the mayhem they caused, stealing "more money than Jesse James, Butch, Sundance, Bonnie and Clyde and the Dalton brothers put together," says leader Willis Newton.

The film stars Matthew McConaughey as Willis Newton, Ethan Hawke as Jess Newton, Vincent D'Onofrio as Dock Newton and Skeet Ulrich as Joe Newton.

Also starring are Julianna Margulies and Dwight Yoakam. Richard Linklater directs from a screenplay he wrote with Claude Stanush and Clark Lee Walker, based on Stanush's book, The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang by Willis and Joe Newton as told to Claude Stanush & David Middleton. Anne Walker-McBay is the producer.

Until now, the saga of the Newton boys remains unknown to most Americans. Success in bank robbing means getting away with it clean, not gaining notoriety through "wanted" posters. The Newton boys, who all lived to be old men, were usually quiet about the details of their "business." Former Life magazine reporter and screenwriter Claude Stanush befriended Willis and Joe Newton in 1973 while collecting Texas tales for a book of short stories he was writing, and quickly decided the Newton Boys' lives and exploits were worthy of their own volume.