The Many Saints of Newark

Dir: Alan Taylor (2hrs) (15)

“Tony Soprano is back!”, said Kevin Maher in The Times. It’s been 14 years since the mobster was last seen, in the ambiguous closing scene of the TV drama, and eight since the actor who played him, James Gandolfini, died aged 51. Now, The Sopranos’ creator David Chase’s prequel has hit the cinemas – featuring Gandolfini’s own son, Michael, as the teenage Tony. He delivers a “soulful, sad-eyed turn that fills” the story with “crushing levels of authenticity”. But the focus of this “outlandishly satisfying” movie is not Tony but the man who becomes his mentor: mid-level mobster Dickie Moltisanti (his surname gives the film its title), who is played with “incendiary charisma” by Alessandro Nivola. Dickie is “silky smooth” on the outside, but internally torn apart by “conflicting professional loyalties, his resentment towards his abusive father (a terrifying Ray Liotta)” and his sexual desire for his young stepmother (Michela De Rossi).

You don’t need “a PhD in Sopranos-ology” to enjoy the film, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph, but it is not for “total novices”. In a “ghoulish touch”, our narrator is Christopher Moltisanti, the protégé Tony murdered in season six of the series. And the film has “bombshells” that will shock its devotees. Where it deviates most is in the introduction of Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.) as a Moltisanti street enforcer, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. He does Dickie’s bidding while swallowing his boss’s racism – but for how much longer? Anger is growing on the streets, and in one powerful scene, Harold finds himself in the midst of the Newark race riots. This is a “fierce and brilliant” film that “both expands on and complicates” The

Sopranos’ cultural legacy. In cinemas.