Review: 'The Many Saints of Newark' veers between 'Sopranos' nostalgia and a fresh view of New Jersey gangsters
On “The Sopranos,” there were classic episodes that set the iconography of creator David Chase’s New Jersey gangster family, and there were the lesser episodes between those classics that moved the chess pieces into position.
The first movie based on Chase’s series, “The Many Saints of Newark,” plays half like a classic and half like a lesser effort.
The movie begins in a cemetery, with the voices of the dead telling their tales. When the camera comes upon the grave marker for the apprentice gangster Christopher Moltisanti, the voice (provided by Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher in the series) tells of two people. One is Tony Soprano, “the man who choked me to death.” The other is Christopher’s father, whom he barely knew in life, Dickie Moltisanti, played by Alessandro Nivola.
It’s 1967, and Dickie is one of the young bucks in the employ of the old guard, represented by Johnny Boy Soprano (Jon Bernthal) and Dickie’s father, “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), who is recently returned from Italy with a lovely new bride, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi). Dickie bears many of the traits “Sopranos” fans will recognize in Tony Soprano: A gruff charm, a slippery view of morality, appeal to women besides his wife, a quick-triggered temper, and a capacity for rage and violence that results in people dying.
When Johnny Boy ends up going to prison for a short stretch, it’s Dickie who’s entrusted to look over Johnny’s wife, Livia (Vera Farmiga), and their children, Jackie and Tony.
Four years later, when Johnny’s out of prison, the kids are teens, with Tony smartly portrayed by Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who so memorably played Tony on the series. The young Tony is at times a bit of a goofball, but he also shows flashes of intelligence. In a key scene, Tony’s principal (Talia Balsam) tells Livia that he has a genius IQ, but gets low grades because he doesn’t apply himself. The principal’s conversation with Tony himself plays like a precursor to the adult Tony’s psychiatric sessions with Dr. Melfi, and hint at the other lives the young Soprano might have had.
Dickie continues to be an outsized influence on Tony, getting him stolen speakers and consoling him at the disturbing number of funerals this family attends. It’s up to Hollywood Dick’s brother, Sal (also played by Liotta), to give Dickie, whose professional and personal lives are spiraling out of control, the necessary advice to stay out of Tony’s life.
While all this happens, hinting at the downward slope of a mob family that Chase’s series depicted, director Alan Taylor and screenwriter Lawrence Konner (both veterans of the series) present a kind of alternate universe to “The Sopranos.” It centers on Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), an up-and-coming Black criminal who starts as a numbers runner for the Italian mobsters, but has the ambition to survive the racial tensions of Newark and build his own enterprise to cater to a changing demographic. These sections of the film suggest a more interesting original story that doesn’t recycle the familiar parts of “The Sopranos.”
Taylor — who directed nine episodes of the series, including the one where Tony killed Christopher — burrows into perfectly creating the period detail of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He also leans in hard in hiring young actors to play the familiar old characters, including Billy Magnussen as the handsome Paulie Walnuts, John Magaro as the dapper Silvio, and particularly Corey Stoll as Uncle Junior, who captures the menace and petty vindictiveness that the late Dominic Chianese brought to the role on TV.
Best of all in that regard is Farmiga, who — aided by a prosthetic nose to resemble the late Nancy Marchand — neatly re-creates the Soprano matriarch’s coldness and tart-tongued belittling of everyone around her, especially her son.
The best performances are from the new players on the scene. Nivola captures Dickie’s arrogance, and his belief that he can do anything with impunity. Odom makes Harold a fascinating wild card, whose anger prompts him to become calculating, to find the cracks in a racist system that he can work to his advantage.
“The Many Saints of Newark” will give fans of “The Sopranos” a fair amount of the tension and character detail they loved on the series. It also delivers the flashes of unsettling violence that were the show’s trademark — though they don’t surprise us as much, because we see them as part of Dickie’s sadly inevitable cycle. When we see Dickie holding his baby son, Christopher, we already know how this story is going to end.
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‘The Many Saints of Newark’
★★★
Opens Friday, October 1, in theaters everywhere, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content and some nudity. Running time: 120 minutes.