Plot
Due to a miscarriage of justice Willis Newton (Matthew McConaughey) was in prison. Afterwards he worked on a farm and was in love with the owner's daughter. Their marriage was confounded when her father was informed that Willis had been a convict. Willis returns to his family's land and tells his mother how the farmer offered him to stay as a mere worker. Still upset he craves for a chance to escape poverty and goes to town.
Willis meets with two criminals named Slim and Glasscock in a western saloon. The proprietor is an Indian chief who got rich when oil was found on his land. Word is the chief would not have even been allowed to enter the saloon as a guest before that. Thus Willis learns that social climbing is possible for him too if only he happens to get to a lot of money somehow in the first place. Now he will collect a great deal of money by robbing banks until he can purchase an oil well.
Slim persuades Willis and Glasscock to carry out a bank robbery in broad daylight. Slim is caught when all three of them try to escape on horseback while the sheriff chases them in a car. Willis and Glasscock later find a bank director who buys the looted war bonds and sells them information on plenty of other banks.
Henceforth Willis and Glasscock rob banks at night and get away by car. Glasscock turns out being an expert for nitroglycerin. Willis talks his brothers into supporting him. He tells them that bankers are the worst crooks at all and subsequently robbing their money would only mean that little thieves stole from big thieves. He also says all banks were insured anyway and the insurance companies ought to be thankful because they couldn't sell any insurances if there wasn't a bank robbery every now and then.
The Newton Gang is very prolific and some bankers prove to be the crooks Willis takes them for because they exaggerate their losses. Subsequently the insurance companies force banks to invest in enhanced safes. The new safes withstand nitroglycerin. Consequently the Newton Gang goes to Toronto and ambushes a cash transport in broad daylight. Despite an elaborate plan many things go awry and the gang members can scarcely escape. Willis decides to become "legal".
The oil spring Willis purchased is a huge setback that costs him nearly all his money. In his despair he goes as far as telling his wife that God didn't want him to be "legit". After that he is easily lured into another criminal endeavour. He gets very enthusiastic about a train robbery at night. Unfortunately Glasscock is not as good with a gun as he was with nitroglycerin. He confuses Dock Newton with a guard, panics and shoots him. Willis needs to bring his wounded brother to a doctor and this undertaking eventually blows their cover.
All Newton Brothers are finally arrested and sentenced.
Read more about this topic: The Newton Boys
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)