by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stall, Jon Bernthal, Ray Liotta, Michel Gandolfini
Intro:
While it may not take full advantage of its new cinematic boundaries, it's still effective as another trip deep down to the front lines.
Only rivalled by the likes of The Wire, The Sopranos remains one of the greatest crime drama series to ever come out of the United States. The acting, the sharper-than-a-broken-bottle writing, the ingenious soundtrack choices, not to mention the Fellini-esque dream sequences; if any series is going to get the cinematic treatment, something this wholeheartedly cinematic should be one of them. And while not every choice behind this feature-length prequel adds up, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
There’s only one real negative to be found here, and that’s to do with the choice of period setting; namely, during and in the aftermath of the 1967 Newark riots. While Leslie Odom Jr as budding hustler Harold keeps up the series’ average for engaging rival criminals, his character and the riots themselves are almost afterthoughts when put next to the main action. It certainly fits with how the gangsters treated Black Americans in the show proper, but it does end up throwing the specific choice of setting into question… as far as real-world history, at least.
As in-universe history, that decision makes far more sense, as seeing the younger versions of the main Soprano family holds true to what makes their characters so aggressively watchable. Corey Stoll maintains Uncle Junior’s notoriously thin skin, John Magaro’s Silvio is every bit as meme-tically charming as his predecessor, and Vera Farmiga is such a winner as Livia Soprano as to nearly overwrite Nancy Marchand entirely, by no means an easy feat. And then there’s Michael ‘son of James’ Gandolfini as teenaged Tony himself, who successfully embodies a lot of the astute thinking and family-mindedness that helped turn his father into a TV icon.
While the familiar names all fit in terms of the larger continuity, it’s with the main story concerning Tony’s uncle Dickie (played to perfection by Alessandro Nivola) that this truly feels like a work worthy of being attached to something like The Sopranos. As he wrestles with his personal and professional lives, with Ray Liotta’s dual casting serving as both his conscience and a reminder of his deadly sin, the way the story develops sticks to writer David Chase’s willingness to trust the audience to put the important pieces together, rather than just handing everything over (case in point: how the original series ended). It builds on the surrounding characterisation to tell a story that, like the main show, has a drip-feed progression but unveils a lot of serious-minded philosophy, empathetic perspectives of the people involved, and a light spritz of darker humour.
The Many Saints of Newark is an example of just how well the original show has aged, as a lot of what makes it work stays true to the guts of David Chase’s original creation/psychiatric dramatisation. While it may not take full advantage of its new cinematic boundaries, it’s still effective as another trip deep down to the front lines.
