The Many Saints of Newark: Pre-Sopranos Drama Short on Bada-Bing
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-minus
Originally scheduled for release in Sept. 2020, The Many Saints of Newark is writer David Chase’s prequel to the HBO series, The Sopranos (1999-2007). That series - which more than enough has been written about - set the bar for the long-form series and golden age of television.
It provided a template for white, midlife crisis-experiencing, anti-heroes from Walt White (Breaking Bad) to Don Draper (Mad Men). The original binger, launched just as the DVD format was hitting its stride, also enjoyed a revival in the 18 months of COVID lockdown for a new generation of watchers.
Michael Gandolfini as teenage Tony Soprano with Alessandro Nivola as Newark mobster Dickie Moltisanti.
As is frequently asserted by TV critics and other advocates of stay-at-home entertainment, The Sopranos proved that television was not just an ad-delivery infotainment appliance but the great popular art form of our time, surpassing its more respected elder sibling cinema.
Yet, the series’ creator, David Chase, now 76, studied film and idolized Fellini, and has always really wanted to be a filmmaker. After a long career as a television writer (Northern Exposure, The Rockford Files), he was desperate to break out of the network rut when he first conceived of The Sopranos as a feature film.
He has insisted that The Many Saints of Newark, is a real theatrical film, not an adjunct to the TV series.
Here’s the rub: David Chase seems to be a lot better at making TV than making movies. To be fair, his filmography is sparse: A 1980 made-for-television social-issue drama, Off The Minnesota Strip, and Not Fade Away (2012), a semi-autobiographical nostalgia-soaked sixties-set rock-and-roll drama.
The Many Saints of Newark covers that same era, in the same state, with similar pop music, home décor and fashion, with the living-room TV set keeping us up on the march of events as race riots tear apart the city of Newark and initiate the “White flight” to the suburbs.
The filmmaking team— Chase, co-writer Lawrence Konner and director Alan Taylor — simply don’t bring enough that’s new to this overworked material. In a cumbersome intro, the story is narrated, a la Sunset Boulevard, by a ghost: Dickie’s son and Tony’s eventual victim, Christopher (Michael Imperioli).
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
Starting before his birth, he introduces us to the moment in 1967, when “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (Ray Liotta) returns from Naples with his wriggling, giggling new bride, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi).
His adult son, Dickie (Alessandro Nivola), is the head of an extensive Newark numbers racket. He’s married to one of the movie’s cluster of nagging bee-hived mob wives, but has eyes for Giuseppina. When Hollywood Dick dies, by highly-unnatural causes, Dickie takes her as his mistress.
One unavoidable disappointment is that Tony, the charismatic and grotesque patriarch, is not the protagonist here and the blandly handsome, inexplicably sociopathic Dickie is. Through the movie’s compulsive foreshadowing, we understand that Dickie is a prototype of Tony, a man who insists he’s trying to be good even while doing reprehensible things.
His story fails to engage us, partly because his situation is banal: Just another mid-level racketeer in a pre-decline urban neighbourhood, where gangsters have big money, meals, and cars.
The film rolls on like a chugging train of disjointed scenes: A grisly murder here, a quasi-documentary street riot or painful relationship revelation there. Truthfully, it felt like a two-hour highlight reel from a not yet delivered television season.
Like Tony a generation later, Dickie seeks counselling, although not yet through a fancy psychiatrist’s office. Instead, he goes on prison visitor’s day to see his late father’s incarcerated brother, Sal (played, in a bit of stunt casting that doesn’t work, by a familiar face). Sal is a reformed mob killer turned jazz-loving Buddhist who advises Dickie on the futility of desire.
When Dickie’s business partner, Johnny Soprano (Jon Bernthal) goes to jail, Dickie, tries to help mentor with his friend’s chubby kid nephew, Anthony, who is first played by William Ludwig, and at about the halfway mark of the two-hour film, by Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini.
The younger Gandolfini has some of his father’s aura — the heft, the half-ingratiating leer and wary gaze — such that there’s a tingle of pleasure watching him onscreen, as he makes his first fumbling adventures in criminality.
None of the other connect-the-dots moments between the movie and the 86-episode TV show are as rewarding: Not Tony’s mother, Livia (Vera Farmiga), Uncle Junior (Corey Stoll), nor Silvio (John Magaro, doing his best robotic Steve Van Zandt impression).
A more disappointing blown opportunity is a secondary plot about late sixties’ racial tensions that wastes Leslie Odom Jr. as Harold, one of Dickie’s enforcers who starts his own racket and becomes Dickie’s rival, both professionally and personally.
Too conventional by half, the prequel betrays the boldness of the original show, though it stirs up good memories. Sopranos complete-ists, who have exhausted analyzing the 86 episodes, may want to pay it homage via this relic, like a bonus extra on the series’ box-set.
The Many Saints of Newark. Directed by Alan Taylor. Written by David Chase and Lawrence Konner. Starring: Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Ray Liotta, Michela De Rossi, Michael Gandolfini, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Samson Moeakiola. The Many Saints of Newark is available in theatres and, in the United States, on cable channel, HBO Max.