Our Gang

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The Newton Boys were for real--a quartet of bank-robbing brothers out of Texas who pioneered the same territory that Bonnie and Clyde would bucket across to much larger celebrity a decade later. There were, however, important differences between the gangs. For one thing, the Newtons were far more successful, financially speaking, than their successors. More important, they did not come to a premature and legend-inspiring end. They all attained great age and modest respectability; one of them even turned up as a guest of Johnny Carson's in the '80s.

Their efficiency and longevity presented certain problems to director Richard Linklater (Slacker) and his co-screenwriters. He has cast some of Hollywood's hottest young guns--notably Matthew McConaughey, who plays smart very well, and Ethan Hawke, who has a nice slippery charm as the gang's smoothest talker. Best of all, Linklater chose ER's Julianna Margulies to play the woman McConaughey courts and marries. She is beguiling both in her initial skepticism and in her loyalty when things start to go bad for the boys.

When they move up to the big cities, they make a farce of a Toronto heist and a near tragedy out of an Illinois train robbery. Linklater isn't quite skilled enough to make a virtue of these mood shifts and settles for a tone of wry, slightly distant amiability. The result is an agreeable movie, but one that is lacking the edge and intensity that films more self- consciously aware of their moral ambiguities sometimes generate.

--R.S.