The Many Saints of Newark

This review contains minor spoilers.

"Your mama always said you'd be the chosen one."

Fourteen years after the iconic HBO show The Sopranos ended its seven-year run as a critical and audience hit, fans' patience has been rewarded with a prequel titled The Many Saints of Newark. It may not exactly be what fans would wish for in a perfect world, but it is likely to suffice anyway. Directed by Alan Taylor and written by Lawrence Konner and show creator Dominic Chase, familiar characters quickly show up. They are obviously played by younger actors, but fans of the show will recognize them immediately. Younger versions of Junior Soprano (Corey Stoll), Livia Soprano (Vera Farmiga), Paulie Walnuts (Billy Magnussen), and a pre-toupée Silvo Dante (John Magaro) all show up. The gang's all here. 

Much of the hype around the film when it was in production centered on the fact that it was an origin story of Tony Soprano, the central, groundbreaking anti-hero of the famous show who was played by the late, great James Gandolfini, and that the character would be played as a teenager by Gandolfini's son, Michael. But Tony is surprisingly not the main character here. That part goes to Alessandro Nivola in a rare starring role as Dickie Moltisanti, Tony's uncle, who basically is the only authority figure Tony will listen to. Nivola does a fine job here, although, because Uncle Dickie (a character whose presence looms largely over The Sopranos) is not as eccentric as some of the other characters mentioned, it's difficult to imagine his mileage lasting as long as other figures have. As a character, Dickie may seem initially to possess at least some decency, or at least he might not be as monstrous as the others; we get sporadic reminders that this is not true.

Ray Liotta makes a triumphant return to the cinematic gangster world more than three decades after Goodfellas helped turn him into a star. Here, he plays two characters: Dickie's father ("Hollywood Dick") and his uncle he never really knew (Sally), locked away in prison for murder. The two older Moltisanti twins are very much a yin-and-yang duo: Hollywood Dick is bombastic and charismatic, with a frightening and violent temper (and it's often his new, young wife from Italy played by Michela De Rossi who is at the receiving end of it), while Sally is sullen and remorseful, rotting away but enjoying the small things, like jazz music. Sally is like a priest or counselor to Dickie (it's the closest we get to a recreation of the therapy scenes in the original show); it's clear Dickie is going to see him because of his guilt, but he won't reveal much to his uncle, only lies. Uncle Sally can see right through him, though. It's a better acting challenge than Liotta has had in the past few years. 

The Sopranos was one of the whitest shows around, but it's at least a little more diverse this time around, largely because of a major part of its setting: the 1967 Newark riots. Chase originally had an idea for this project—that of four white guys being sent to Vietnam during the riots—in the beginning part of his career, but the idea didn't go anywhere. This central element to the story (the way Black people have been treated in this country, especially by the police and the military industrial complex) adds an element of politics the show only occasionally dabbled in (often through Tony inching his way into modernity, often because of the lectures from his social-justice-warrior daughter). This angle makes its way to the Moltisanti/Soprano family by way of a rising criminal named Harold McBrayer, who's played by Leslie Odom Jr. Harold and Dickie are associates, but between little insults and a host of other tensions, their relationship sours, and they soon become enemies.

Despite the commendable acting from Odom, Nivola, and Liotta, there is an enormous emotional weight to the project due to Gandolfini's presence. Tony is still the most interesting character here. The most compelling tragedy to witness in The Many Saints of Newark isn't the rise and fall of Dickie Moltisanti or the rivalry between gangsters, but instead the inability of Tony's mother to be a good parent. It's not as if Livia is the sole reason Tony turned out to be a ruthless, murderous mob boss, but her ineffectiveness as a mother is a large part of what made the show so iconic because that's one of the major reasons Tony ends up in therapy.   

For the record, I liked The Sopranos (a lot, I think). Maybe not as much as The Wire, but I still liked it. I do, however, still hold reservations about the show, namely its depictions of violence against women. In The Sopranos, that violence is often inexcusably gratuitous, like in the controversial episode "University," in which a twenty-year-old woman played by Ariel Kiley is beaten to death in a parking lot by the gangster Ralphie Ciffaretto (Joe Pantoliano). The people behind the scenes would try to explain the necessity of depicting these gangsters as monsters. (This wasn't necessary, though. We understood they're terrible people going into the show way back in 1999; we've all seen Goodfellas.) Yet depicting such a scene and then trying to mansplain it away reveals issues with the series: Like basically all of the gangster flicks Martin Scorsese has directed, The Sopranos is a show (as Anne Cohen reminded us a few years ago) by, of, and for men. The show was a rarity in pop culture: it had numerous great, interesting, terrifically written and acted roles played by women, and yet it also possessed a male-only perspective on their depiction. The issue again roars its ugly head in The Many Saints of Newark.  

As a film itself, it's essentially fine, partly due to it having impossibly high expectations. But what works, works. It features a great soundtrack, and its actors, as mentioned, do a commendable job. It might not be as awesome as some kind of Sopranos Part II might have been, but it's recommendable nevertheless.