BEFORE: Since my attempts to have a sandwich named for me have not been successful (yet...), I've decided I may have better luck with a cocktail. This is what I often pour for myself on a Monday evening - most of the time I'm a beer guy, but if I make a mixed drink, it's as easy as this: fill a glass with ice cubes, then pour in some Bacardi Razz until 1/4 full. Then add some Diet Mountain Dew until 3/4 full, and top off with some cranberry/grape juice. Let's call it the "Honky's Hard Day".
If you don't have Diet Mountain Dew, you can use regular, but this can make it too sweet. Or you can use Sprite, or ginger ale - ginger ale tastes better, but since it's my drink, and I drink a lot of Diet Dew when I watch movies, that's the main recipe. If you don't have cran-grape, you can use regular grape juice. You can also use Bacardi coconut rum, but then that would be a "Honky's Vacation". Add more rum, and you've got a "Honky's Really Hard Day". I guarantee, two of these on a Monday evening, plus an episode of "True Detective", and you'll be right in the head again.
Linking from "Lawless", Gary Oldman was also in the film "Tiptoes" with Matthew McConaughey (last seen in "U-571"), in which they played brothers, and Oldman played a little person. I saw that on a trip to Sundance, and if you haven't seen that, you should check it out for curiosity's sake. Wait a second, there was an actor that carried over from "Lawless", his name is Lew Temple. Never mind.
THE PLOT: The story of the Newton gang, the most successful bank robbers in history, thanks to their good planning and minimal violence.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (Movie #100)
AFTER: Like "Lawless", this is a film about a family of brothers, and somehow the fact that they're all looking out for each other while committing criminal acts is supposed to distract the audience, or at least make us feel better about the fact that what they're doing is very very wrong. It's suggested here that stealing from banks (rather than citizens) is OK, because bankers are just thieves themselves, which seems almost like an idea that was 80 years ahead of its time. Anyway, that's why people pay for insurance, right?
The Newton boys are proud of how they rob banks, blowing up safes in the dead of night, which minimizes the civilian casualties - umm, until it doesn't. And until people start fighting back - I guess if word spreads that a gang won't shoot to kill, that makes it easier to try and disarm them. Again, they don't necessarily regard themselves as evil, but on some level, they have to know that what they're doing isn't right, right?
The film's credits includes two sequences with the real Newton boys, err...as old men - one being interviewed on "The Tonight Show" and the other speaking directly to the camera, clarifying that their intent was only to get rich. Oh, well, by all means then, please proceed. But how can they hold such contempt for bankers, when without their greed and love of square safes, they never could have gotten rich in the first place?
I'm curious as to when Matthew McConaughey became such a good actor - obviously some time prior to getting an Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club" and killing it on "True Detective", but as my wife is fond of pointing out, isn't this the same guy who got arrested a few years ago for playing bongos in his underwear, and being quite obviously stoned in public? Wasn't he like the male Lindsay Lohan for a while there? How did he turn that reputation around? Where was the turning point - "Amistad"? "A Time to Kill"?
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Tape"), Skeet Ulrich (last seen in "The Craft"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Happy Accidents"), Julianna Margulies (last heard in "Dinosaur"), Dwight Yoakam (last seen in "Wedding Crashers"), Bo Hopkins, Chloe Webb, with archive footage of Johnny Carson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 mailbags
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