During the height of COVID, Melbourne, the city I live in, had the longest lockdown in the world. For 262 non-consecutive days, we were indoors trying to pass the time while we waited for numbers to get under control. Not to get political or anything but it was the right thing for our government to do and it saved lives.
Most importantly, it gave me the opportunity to finally watch The Sopranos, a show that I had watched on and off when it first came out but never got past season 3. This was not a comment on quality, it’s more me showing my age as around season 3 I went to university and because I didn’t own a TV, I didn’t get to watch anything.
Regularly hyped as the best show of all time, The Sopranos is a remarkable work of television. It’s aged in a wonderful way that feels time capsule-y rather than dated. The fashion, the technology, the references all feel like fond memories rather than reminders that the show is nearly 25 years old.
What is most incredible about it is James Gandolfini. His performance as Tony Soprano is one for the ages. It is a masterclass in taking a completely unlikeable, reprehensible, amoral character and finding that tiny spark of humanity that makes us want things to work for him. No matter how evil or shitty he is, you find yourself in his corner somehow and that’s all down to Gandolfini’s performance and a team of writers/directors working at the top of their game.
The Many Saints of Newark was released in 2021, just after I finished the oft-debated, definitely incredible finale of the show. I was kept from the cinema to see it by a combination of another COVID lockdown and becoming a father. With a killer virus and a six-month-old baby on my mind, the cinema was the least of my priorities.
Because I didn’t get to see it right away, I ended up seeing a lot of negative or apathetic headlines about it, which lowered my need to see it even further. It’s a silly failing of mine that I let Rotten Tomatoes scores and out-of-context headlines turn me away from a movie, when I know I’ll need to see it myself to know how good a thing is or not. And I say that as a critic and a Rotten Tomatoes accredited one at that.
So with the lockdown over, it’s time to complete The Sopranos story and see how The Many Saints of Newark fares away from the hype.
The Many Saints of Newark
David Chase has always favored the anti-climax over the big resolution. In The Sopranos, so many seasons felt as though they were building to some huge gang war or murderous confrontation only for some act of God or change of heart to stop those events in their tracks. At its core, the show was always about Tony Soprano and his struggles in the world. Not just the criminal world, but the whole world. How can a man like him exist when he feels like he’s a man in the wrong time period struggling with past trauma while heading a family both criminal and domestic?
Gang wars and such were just color in the background of one of the most perfect character studies ever committed to screen. Not to digress too heavily, but this does make me wonder how anyone who watched the show for 64 episodes got to the finale and was shocked that it would simply…end. No gunshots, no final realizations, no hugs, no changes of heart. Just a man sitting in a restaurant with his family, a possible indictment looming but with an enemy vanquished.
Of course it would finish mid-scene with no easy answers or a definitive ending. The Sopranos was always a moving target. It was a show that featured intense violence next to broad slapstick comedy. It could spend a couple of episodes in dream sequences of a possible afterlife and not seem to have lost its mind. It showcased an intensely cancerous lead character that we found ourselves endeared to right up to the final moments even though we had seen him perform acts of depravity, cruelty, and violence that should have made him an irredeemable villain.
It makes a lot of sense that The Many Saints of Newark isn’t a traditional origin story for Tony Soprano (played by Michael Gandolfini, James’ son). This isn’t one of those prequels where they feel the need to tick off a bunch of attributes for a character and how they first come to take those traits. We don’t see Tony meet Carmela (though she makes a brief appearance), we don’t see his first cigar, we don’t have any easter eggs about him one day being the Boss, and we don’t see his first gabagool. The closest we ge
t is a moment in which we see that baby Christopher Moltisanti is scared of him and an old woman wonders if the baby knows something supernaturally about Tony, the boy who will one day murder Christopher.
If anything, Tony is very much a side character in the movie dominated by the story of Dickie Moltisanti, a character oft mentioned in The Sopranos. The difference between the show and the movie is that while they both lean towards the anti-climactic and avoid the easy answer, the show would still give you the occasional pay-off, whereas the movie never seems to get going.
It never feels like an origin story for Tony, nor does it feel like a good character study of Dickie. For the most part, it doesn’t enlighten us to anything within the world of The Sopranos we don’t already know, and when it does it’s not anything we were wondering about. For example, Junior having Dickie killed doesn’t change anything as there was never really much interaction of note between Christopher Moltisanti and Junior in the original show. It’s not an a-ha! moment that repurposes a character as we already know that Junior Soprano is a petty asshole from watching The Sopranos.
A prequel’s very existence needs to feel essential as though it is still part of the bigger story. Better Call Saul showed how to do it well by creating an enriching, captivating story that managed to run alongside Breaking Bad, enhancing the original show and changing it for future audiences who will likely see Saul as a lead character rather than comic relief. The Star Wars prequels are going through a renaissance now as people see that knowing the story of Anakin Skywalker creates a richness for the stories that follow in Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rebels, and both the original and sequel trilogies.
The problem with The Many Saints of Newark is that it never feels essential. It barely even feels like a Sopranos story. We never lock into what Tony wants from scene to scene as he’s robbing ice cream trucks one scene, then balking at taking stolen speakers the next. He seems destined for criminal life one minute then bound for college football straight after. I can appreciate the movie wanting to avoid easy answers, but any kind of answers would have helped.
Conclusion:
There are great performances in here. Vera Farmiga is incredible as Livia Soprano, completely capturing Nancy Marchand’s unhinged portrayal with all the little tics and nuances that Marchand had. Alessandro Nivola and Leslie Odom Jr are also great as the friends turned enemies who’s brewing war moves the plot before Chase cuts the legs out from under it.
Ray Liotta plays two characters and while his Hollywood Dickie is just a loudmouthed gangster asshole, his twin brother Sal is a zen murderer behind bars dispensing wisdom to the younger Dickie. His character seems to exist in a better, weirder movie full of strange undertones and menace. Every time he appeared on screen I was hooked.
Disappointingly, Billy Magnussen and John Magaro play two of the best characters from The Sopranos and decide to go two very different directions with their roles. Magnussen as Paulie Walnuts could be playing anyone. He doesn’t capture Tony Sirico’s goofiness or pettiness. He’s just a bit of a heavy leering in the background. Magaro on the other hand delivers a Saturday Night Live impression of Steven Van Zandt that feels so overdone that it becomes parodic. Van Zandt and Sirico were both standout performers on the original show, so it was rough to see them get such weird treatment in the movie.
In the end, the movie is a mess and I’m left wondering if a big part of that is the lack of James Gandolfini. If the actor was still alive, would he have narrated the movie? Would his character have taken center stage so we could listen to him explain how he came to be the man he became? Who knows? But without Gandolfini, without clear stakes, without any sort of revelation, we’re left with a movie that sort of resembles The Sopranos but feels more like a cheap knockoff that fell from the back of a truck.
Watch The Many Saints of Newark
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