The Many Saints of Newark Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, its time for a new review and this will be on the much anticipated prequel movie to the acclaimed TV series, The Sopranos, which is The Many Saints of Newark, which covers the rise of gangster, Dickie Moltisanti and his impact on a young Tony Soprano growing up in the 1960's and 70's. 

So, this film has a lot to live up to given the stature of the TV series, so how does it fair??? Well, let's find out...

And the usual warning is coming up...

PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD! (BUT NOT TOO MANY!)

STORY 

So, I will quote a bit of the plot from Wikipedia below:

"In 1967, a young Tony Soprano travels with his mentor, Dickie Moltisanti, to welcome home Dickie's father, "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti, and his new Italian bride, Giuseppina. Moltisanti is a soldier in the DiMeo crime family, which also consists of Johnny Soprano and his brother Junior, Silvio Dante, Paulie Walnuts, Pussy Bonpensiero, and "Buddha", Pussy Bonpensiero's father. After a black taxi driver is assaulted by white police officers, riots break out in Newark. One of Dickie's black associates, Harold McBrayer, begins to take part in the riots".

Non-Wikipedia story a bit further below:

The story later cuts to 1971 where Tony is a teenager, who is still at school but gets in trouble but Dickie still acts a mentor to Tony, looking out for him. Dickie however soon has struggles of his own as he has to deal with Harold, who is now out to form his own black criminal operation and engage in a war with the Mafia...

THOUGHTS

It has to be said if you are going to go into this film with very high expectations then you might well be disappointed with the Many Saints of Newark in contrast to the seminal TV series of The Sopranos. However, if you just accept the film as its own stand-alone story and try not to compare it against the series as closely, then this is definitely still a very solid and entertaining film that tells its own story pretty well for the most part. 

The film also does a great job at fleshing out the main character of Dickie Moltisanti, as a charismatic gangster, who is likeable and charming but at the same time also a dangerous sociopath with a darker side to him. It also does quite well with dealing with Tony's childhood years and his teenage years, even if his character does play second fiddle somewhat to the main story line involving Dickie.  

It also even re-introduces the familiar characters from the Sopranos such as Silvio Dante, Paulie "Walnuts" Gaultieri, Salvatore "Pussy" Boniponsero and of course Corrado "Junior" Soprano albeit most of them take on fairly minor roles in the story. Whereas Tony's mother, Livia Soprano plays a greater part in the film, who has to deal with the endless frustrations of her gangster husband, Johnny and troubles of her son, Tony. 

However, for the most part, this is definitely Dickie's story and its good to see Christopher's father finally get some proper representation on the screen (big or small!).

PERFORMANCES (Warning: there might be the odd spoiler but no notable scenes!)

As for the performances, well the cast are in very good form here and provide solid performances all round. 

Starting with Alessandro Nivola who is great in his role as the charismatic, Dickie Moltisanti, who is a soldier in the DiMeo crime family and has various struggles throughout the film to deal with ranging from his family problems to the racial gang wars in New Jersey in the 1970's. Nivola does a terrific job throughout in the film and shows different sides to Dickie's personality from his charming fun side to his darker side, which leads to nothing but misery for him as things progress. 

Leslie Odom Jr is excellent in his role as Harold McBrayer, a black associate of Dickie's who later becomes his rival as he sets up his own criminal operation during the riots and troubles of the 60's and early 70's. Odom Jr also shows that Harold is definitely a dangerous match-up for Dickie in the film as the two of them come to blows. 

Ray Liotta also does a great job in his dual role as Hollywood Dick, Dickie's father, and his father's brother, Sal, who serves a prison sentence for murder. Liotta also manages to pull off playing the two brothers quite differently from Hollywood Dick's more exuberant personality to Sal being far more reserved and wise. 

Vera Farmiga is terrific also in the film as Livia Soprano, Tony's somewhat misanthropic mother, and Farmiga rightly has gathered much acclaim for her performance as she does a great job playing a legendary part that would have been difficult to fill for any actress after Nancy Marchand's performance in the TV series.

Corey Stoll does a very good job also as Junior Soprano, the brother of Johnny "Boy" Soprano, who tries to be an affectionate uncle to his nephew, Tony but is often seen as being jealous and resentful of Dickie, who has a greater influence on Tony in his youth. 

Jon Bernthal also does very well as Johnny Soprano, Tony's father and husband to his long suffering wife, Livia. Bernthal does a pretty good job here although it has to be said that his character doesn't feature as much in the film as it possibly could have and his performance isn't quite as memorable as Joseph Siravo's was from the TV series. 

Michela De Rossi is excellent in her role as the pretty Italian Giuseppina Moltisanti, who is married to Hollywood Dick at first but it is clear from the onset that Dickie has his eye on her and things take a few dramatic turns with them as the film progresses. 

And last but by no means least is Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who plays the role of the teenage Tony Soprano, who engages in some petty activities as a teenager but also looks up to Dickie almost as a second father figure, particularly in the absence of his actual father. 

Michael does a good job here in the role and he manages not to mimic James Gandolfini's performance and come up with his own interpretation of the role although if I did have a criticism, I felt at times Michael's voice wasn't too well suited to the role and the best parts of his performance came from his expressions and reactions. And even though the film is not primarily about Tony, Michael definitely got his fair share of the press attention for the movie.

DIRECTOR 

As for the direction, Alan Taylor does an excellent job here with the film, who was already a semi regular director from the Sopranos as he did 9 episodes from the series, so he was clearly a solid choice to direct the film. Taylor provides a fairly swift pace to the film and gives it a somewhat pale color scheme, which is a feature of many TV shows and feature films these days but it does to an extent, help convey the somewhat dark tone of the film although there is still plenty of humor here as there was in the show. So, overall Taylor does a fine job here. 

MUSIC

As for the music score, the film has an original score for once, unlike the TV series, which used tracks from various different artists and bands from the past. The score here was by Peter Nashel and its pretty decent although not that memorable in contrast to the nature of how music was used in the Sopranos.

FLAWS (Warning: there might be the odd spoiler mentioned here!)

As for flaws...yes, well Many Saints does have some.

For starters, I felt that the race riots story line, while it was a reflection of the times in the US of the 1960s, it felt like it took away somewhat from the story of Dickie and the Mafia crime family although I do appreciate that the film had to depict some sort of conflict in that regard. 

I also felt that some of the performances of the regular characters from the show such as Paulie Gaultieri and in particular, Silvio Dante, where more like parodies than actual solid performances. This is especially noticeable with the actor whole play the role of Sil, John Magaro, who clearly is doing more a caricature of the character than deliver an actual performance, as he seems more concerned with capturing how Sil walks at times than anything else! 

Further to this point, the film also does sideline some characters too, especially Johnny Soprano, who is in prison for most of the duration of the film and does make his appearance later but he isn't given much screen time. And in this respect, perhaps it puts a bit too much emphasis overall on Dickie's character and not give the others as much breathing room. 

I also felt that the color scheme of the film is just a bit too pale and muted as there are too many films like that already out there such as Fight Club, Superman Returns, The Matrix to name a few (although The Matrix had its reasons for this). And its become very common in films these days and this film continues the trend as I was very aware of how dreary it made the film appear when I watched it in the cinema. 

WARNING: BIG SPOILER COMING UP RELATING TO THE TV SHOW!!!

And last of all and what is my biggest complaint about the film is its narration by Michael Imperioli, who reprises his role of Christopher Moltisanti as we hear him narrate from the grave as he reveals a BIG spoiler about the TV show and that spoiler is that Tony killed Christopher. Now to any Sopranos fan, who has seen the show, this isn't a big deal however to anyone who has never seen the show and would like to check it out after seeing the film, it IS a big deal as it has just given away one big almighty spoiler for that audience! 

So, for me I really did think that Christopher's narration was a bit of a mistake in giving that information away to any uninitiated members of the audience, who hadn't see the show so far but might want to in future. Its almost like, the series creator, David Chase, aimed this film at a casual audience, who were not as inclined to want to watch the show afterward (although I am most likely wrong about that!). So, that was definitely my biggest gripe with the film overall.

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So, in summing up, The Many Saints of Newark is a very good film that tells its own story from The Sopranos universe very well and succeeds in crafting an appealing character in Dickie Moltisanti, who was mentioned only by name in the series. The film also features some very solid performances from the cast and in particular, Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga give stand-out performances in their own ways.  

The film of course does still have a few issues and it certainly doesn't come near hitting the heights of The Sopranos but it does succeed in telling its own story well and its worth checking out even if it has gotten some backlash from the fans of show, I'd still check it out and judge it for yourself. 

So, I will give The Many Saints of Newark:

8 out of 10

So, that's it for now and I will be back with another post before the end of the month.

Until the next one, its bye for now!