Not to be hyperbolic, but Richard Linklater's first big-budget movie may be the Jules and Jim of bank-robber movies, thanks to its astonishing handling of period detail and its gentleness of spirit, both buoyed by a gliding lightness of touch.

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.

The Newton Boys is Linklater's most conventional film and, despite its numerous flaws, it's not bad.

Some directors can profit from the strictures of a strong narrative, but, for Linklater, the conventionality of The Newton Boys works against the glide of his free-floating style.

There are no dramatic peaks and valleys in this story line, just a uniform, dramatic flatness.

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.

Inoffensive and designed to cater to some sort of middle-of-the-road constituency (it's not entirely clear who wants period gangster Westerns to be jolly instead of dark), this film is a huge leap forward for director and cowriter Richard Linklater, and he tackles the genre conventions and period set pieces with eminent grace.

The characters never take hold, and the result feels eerily hollow, like a series of charming improvisational bloopers.

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

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.