An average movie

Since I have a weak spot for Richard Linklater, I definitely had to check this flick. Eventually, it was a fun watch but it is not one of his best directing effort. It's too bad since the whole thing actually had some potential. Indeed, first of all, there was a nice cast (Matthew McConaughey, Skeet Ulrich, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Julianna Margulies and Dwight Yoakam), the directing by Linklater was solid as usual and those Newton boys (who really existed) seemed to be some rather fascinating crime figures. In spite of all those fine ingredients, the whole thing was still nothing mind-blowing, I'm afraid. I mean, it was fun, it was entertaining for a while but, that's it, and it is probably because the story was way too pedestrian, way too predictable and it didn't offer anything that I hadn't seen before in all those gangster movies. At the end, if I recall correctly, there were some real life footage of the remaining Newton boys and this (very short) footage was actually better and more interesting than the entire movie itself... Still, it remains a decent and entertaining gangster flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Linklater's work.

6/10