THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (15)
REVIEWS BY DAMON SMITH
PRIDE comes before two falls – one horribly intentional, the other accidental – in the feature-length prequel to sprawling crime drama The Sopranos.
The film explores racial tensions in 1960s New Jersey as a vivid backdrop to the awkward rites-of-passage of the series’ lead character, Anthony Soprano, played on the small screen by James Gandolfini.
The actor’s son Michael portrays a socially awkward younger incarnation of the sociopathic mob boss in director Alan Taylor’s film.
The Many Saints Of Newark opens with the Dimeo crime family led by Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) struggling to maintain a vice-like grip on the neighbourhood as black citizens loot stores and set streets ablaze in response to police brutality.
Dickie’s loyal lieutenants Silvio Dante (John Magaro), Walnuts (Billy Magnussen) and Big Pussy (Samson
Moeakiola) follow their boss’s lead as Harold Mcbrayer (Leslie Odom Jr), a small-time runner in the operation, ignites a turf war by setting up a rival numbers racket with his cousin Cyril (Germar Terrell Gardner).
Impressionable teenager Anthony Soprano (Gandolfini) idolises Dickie, more so than his father Johnny Boy (Jon Bernthal), who has just returned home to wife Livia (Vera Farmiga) after a four-year stretch behind bars.
Tony watches intently as rival gangsters jostle for supremacy and blood ties are severed.
Meanwhile, Dickie clashes with his father (Ray Liotta) and secretly covets the old man’s young bride Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi).
The script penned by series creator David Chase and Lawrence Konner strains fraternal bonds like The Godfather and Goodfellas, nodding to the latter film’s wise guys by casting Liotta.
There are few concessions to audiences unfamiliar with the awardwinning TV show.
Screenwriters occasionally foreshadow events in the series, like when Tony’s nephew Christopher Moltisanti, who appears briefly as a mewling infant here and will be choked to death by his uncle in adulthood, bawls when he stares into the eyes of teenage Tony.
“I don’t know what it is. It’s like I scare him or something,” chuckles the adolescent Soprano.
Gandolfini possesses some of his father’s mannerisms, tethering the two timelines as superb production design and costumes step return us to an era of sharp suits and bouffant updos.
Characters take tragic tumbles but Chase and Konner’s script maintains a solid footing.
■