The Many Saints of Newark

It speaks to The Sopra­nos’ endur­ing rep­u­ta­tion that even the trail­er for its spin-off fea­ture film couldn’t resist using the icon­ic musi­cal cue which is seared into the brain of any­one who’s ever seen the show’s open cred­its – the Cho­sen One remix of Alaba­ma 3’s hip hop anthem ​‘Woke Up This Morning’.

It’s a small detail, but speaks to a wider ques­tion about David Chase and Lawrence Konner’s pre­quel project; how do you make a sto­ry about America’s most infa­mous crime fam­i­ly with­out retread­ing old ground?

Chase and Kon­ner opt­ed to go back­wards instead of for­wards, fol­low­ing the antics of a teenage Tony Sopra­no (played by James Gandolfini’s son Michael) and – more promi­nent­ly – his uncle Dick­ie Molti­san­ti (Alessan­dro Nivola) against the back­drop of 1960s Newark, New Jersey.

That isn’t to say we’re with­out famil­iar faces – fan favourites Sil­vio Dante and Paulie Wal­nuts are recast in their youth (John Mag­a­ro and Bil­ly Mag­nussen respec­tive­ly) while the Sopra­no clan gets extend­ed out, with Jon Bern­thal and Vera Farmi­ga play­ing Tony’s par­ents, and Corey Stoll a dead-ringer for the wease­ly ​“Uncle Junior”.

It’s undoubt­ed­ly a hand­some cast, but every­one who loves The Sopra­nos knows it was so much more than the sum of its parts, delv­ing into men­tal ill­ness, com­bustible fam­i­ly dynam­ics, and what lies at the rot­ten heart of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca: the all-con­sum­ing desire for more.

With that sort of lega­cy rest­ing on its shoul­ders, The Many Saints of Newark was always going to face an uphill bat­tle to match the bril­liance of its tele­vised pre­de­ces­sor, but per­haps the show’s pop­u­lar­i­ty even 14 years after its final episode aired was too much of a temp­ta­tion for HBO.

Newark finds itself a city divid­ed in the 1970s, with racial ten­sions flar­ing between Black and white res­i­dents – in par­tic­u­lar the DiMeo crime fam­i­ly. For a teenage Antho­ny Sopra­no, con­cerns most­ly focus around pet­ty squab­bles and his col­lege prospects, but he idolis­es Uncle Dick­ie, par­tic­u­lar­ly after his own father winds up in prison.

Alas, Dickie’s no saint, embroiled in all man­ner of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al scan­dals – and any­one famil­iar with Tony Soprano’s char­ac­ter arc will undoubt­ed­ly know where the run­away train is head­ed from the start.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the film’s stub­born focus on Dick­ie Molti­san­ti and his phi­lan­der­ing ways pulls away from the won­der­ful per­for­mance Michael Gan­dolfi­ni puts in as young Tony, emu­lat­ing his father with­out at all seem­ing self-con­scious. There’s a sweet­ness to his char­ac­ter too; this is, of course, Tony Sopra­no when he still stood half a chance.

But with such a large cast of char­ac­ters crammed into a two-hour run­time, it’s dif­fi­cult to real­ly get to know them (the show was at an obvi­ous advan­tage here, giv­ing us so much time to know and love – or hate – the extend­ed Sopra­no clan). The always com­pelling Leslie Odom Jr plays Harold McBray­er, an ambi­tious small-time crook work­ing for Dick­ie Molti­san­ti who sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to hit the big time, but he bare­ly gets a look-in, as does Tony’s revered father, the infa­mous John­ny Boy Soprano.

It’s an obvi­ous attempt to mir­ror Tony’s future rela­tion­ship with Dickie’s son Christo­pher Molti­san­ti, whom he men­tored through­out The Sopra­nos, but it’s heavy-hand­ed and lacks the trag­ic grace of the tele­vi­sion show. What does remain is a lot of bru­tal­i­ty, although most of it is direct­ed towards Black char­ac­ters, which feels like a mis­step con­sid­er­ing how lit­tle the film does to give them a real presence.

There are some pos­i­tives: Corey Stoll is a stand-out as self-seri­ous schemer Junior Sopra­no, and the film does echo the pet­ty machis­mo which leads to so many unfor­tu­nate events with­in the tele­vi­sion show. But this is part of the prob­lem – every­thing about The Many Saints of Newark feels like a pale imi­ta­tion of its source mate­r­i­al. As a world-build­ing curio, it’s pass­able, and die-hard fans will get a kick out of some of the show ref­er­ences, but it takes all the ele­ments which make The Sopra­nos spe­cial and flat­tens the nuance, Sopra­nos in name but not in nature.

With a for­get­table, bor­der­line gener­ic, plot and direc­tion lack­ing flair and artistry, it’s not a dis­as­ter, it’s just a dis­ap­point­ment. But per­haps, like the Mad King Tony Sopra­no him­self, it nev­er stood a chance.