The Many Saints of Newark
I tried to keep my expectations within the realm of the reasonable for this fall's THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, a prequel to the long running and much beloved HBO series The Sopranos. I was and am a fan of the show, though not to the obsessive degree that I am for say, The Wire or Twin Peaks. My emotional investment is fairly minimal, so even if this movie was a miss it wouldn't sting so much, right? Let's just say that I was glad I watched it on HBO Max rather than braving a COVID era movie house. Any guilt I might've felt about that (I am an advocate for seeing films on the big screen) was quickly neutralized by a messy, distracted affair that to me felt like an overstuffed pilot.
The film's opening was not promising. The camera zooms through a cemetery and we hear the voices of its dead, including Christopher Moltisanti (voiced by original actor Michael Imperioli), who occasionally narrates this movie. Fans will recall that Tony Soprano whacked Chris during the series. In further efforts for fan service by screenwriter David Chase and director Alan Taylor, when a teenaged Tony (Michael Gandolfini) attempts to hold the newborn Chris, the infant bawls. There will be many other nods to the show, some of which are sweet, and others which just seem like pandering.
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, set during the late 1960s/early to mid 1970s, profiles Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), a loyal member of the Soprano crime family and mentor to Tony. This is really his story, a figure we only vaguely heard about before. Nivola does good work, naturally inhabiting a hot headed, impulsive criminal yet revealing something resembling a soul in certain moments. Kinda like Tony. Whatever good qualities they share, both will prove to be ruthless killers, entirely (arguably?) shaped by their environments. The film gives us flashes of Tony's childhood and early teen years, though of course I wanted much more of that. Michael Gandolfini's (son of the late James G.) is eerily similar to his father, in features and nuance, and also delivers a solid performance.
But the movie has a lot going on, too much, and only occasionally succeeds with the dark comic tone so seemingly effortless during the series. The race riots of the late '60s provide an interesting background but don't really contribute to or enhance the story. Nor does the thread of Harold (Leslie Odom, Jr.), a black henchman of Dickie's who eventually becomes inspired (by both racial oppression and his own resourcefulness) to go independent. Chase sets up this and several other plot strands as if we're about to embark on a new series. I guess we'll have more prequels to come, hopefully ones much tighter than this.
Let me also bitch about how crappy the film looks. Kramer Morgenthau's photography favors that blue tint so common in films and T.V shows (Ozark) these days, and comes off like bad color timing. But the use of lesser known songs on the soundtrack is good. Though unlike I would assume for many other Sopranos buffs, the familiar theme that creeps up during the last scene felt kinda cheesy to me.
I did like Ray Liotta, who plays both Dickie's father and uncle, the latter of whom is serving a life sentence and carries a stare that makes you realize he knows his nephew is a lying sack of shit, even if he does coach a little league team for blind kids.
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