The Many Saints of Newark

When The Sopranos ushered its way onto HBO in 1999 and hustled its way toward the series finale in 2007, the show was praised as one of the greatest series in television history. Maybe just as important, it paved the way for the concept of DVD releases of series on premium cable, a forerunner to the streaming format that is a major distribution method today. The concept of paying a "bundle" price, albeit for a DVD set in the early-2000s or a streaming subscription now, was popularized by the chance for fans to own complete pieces of the Jersey mob saga. It seems like light years ago, but since HBO is a subscription channel itself, customers that didn't have access to the show during its original run had the chance to watch the complete series through DVD.

A side note, it's very interesting to see how HBO, a network built on full-length movies shortly after they concluded their theater run, and big time boxing, had to re-image its brand in some ways because of the evolution of media distribution. Streaming technology makes content more accessible outside of the traditional cable format so providers include an almost endless amount of on-demand content at no extra cost to attempt to entice customers to keep their cable packages. For HBO, without the championship boxing under its umbrella after the economics of the the sport shoved the network out of the boxing business, and feature films not as exclusive as they were even a decade ago, the channel has focused on accessibility to its stellar catalog of an array of series and the development of new projects. The network, assuming it can maintain viewers, is in a win-win situation because they get a cut of the HBO subscriptions through cable providers and also have revenue from HBO Max, the streaming service that anyone can subscribe to without the usual cable package.

For anyone reading this, if you have a subscription to HBO through your cable provider, you automatically have access to HBO Max, despite the process to sync that information being as easy as swimming with a pair of cement shoes.

Speaking of HBO Max, the streaming service hosted the premiere of The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel film based on The Sopranos series. Written by David Chase, who also wrote the original series, Many Saints takes the audience back to the origins of Tony, the anti-hero that the show was build around. It was only briefly mentioned in the series, but Tony would occasional reference his nephew Christopher's dad, Dickie Moltisanti as an influence on him. Dickie was mentioned enough on the show to create an intrigue about who the character was, but his story wasn't told in detail so theoretically, there was a narrative for this film.

What truly shaped Tony Soprano into one of the most well-known characters in television history?

I'm going to attempt to review this film without giving away too much of the plot so forgive me if anyone reading it hasn't had a chance to watch it yet. I must take a second to note that similar to some of the other mafia dramas that I've written about, my dad and I watched this film, as he sipped coffee and ate some M&Ms, an ironic throwback to years ago.

As far as what the film got right, the cast was well-assembled with names like Jon Bernthal, Ray Liotta, and for some sentimental value, Michael Gandolfini. It's not that Micheal has a stellar resume that he brings to the table, but it's certainly a nice achievement for James Gandolfini's real-life son to play young Tony. In the opening moments of the film, we're greeted by Micheal Imperioli's voice as we see his headstone in a cemetery, a reference back to the final season of The Sopranos  when Tony suffocated his nephew following a car accident because Christopher admitted he used drugs before the wreck. The former wiseguy was nearly clipped during an early season and was told he would eventually go to hell for his life of crime. As the second generation Moltisanti narratives portions of the film to progress the story, he confirms his fate, taking the glamour away from the mob life.

Outside of those few aspects, this film misses the mark on too many levels to truly connect the dots on the Soprano saga, which is why there's much more to say about missteps than successes. Most importantly, by nature, an origin story will appeal to the serious Soprano fan base, but Many Saints doesn't have enough of the original flavor to make that connection. Along with that, while there are clever nods to the series, as basic as it might sounds, there's not really "enough Sopranos" in the Sopranos prequel. One of the reasons the show was so iconic was it's all-star cast of memorable characters, but the attempt to re-create some of those on-screen personas fell short. Stevie Van Zandt, known for his time as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street band, was so well-known for his role as Silvio Dante, and Tony Sirico is linked with Paulie Walnuts that to attempt to recast those personas even as young versions fall flat.

Granted, age prevented them from being presented as younger at this point in their careers, but that brings the question to mind, was hitting the mark with a Sopranos project in 2021 possible?

There are a few holes in the logic and timeline of events throughout the film, which might seem like a petty criticism, but again, a prequel will bring in the most dedicated audience so these aspects will be noticed. Joseph Siravo, who passed away earlier this year from cancer, played Johnny Soprano for flashback scenes during the series. Perhaps, it was because of his age or health, but without the usual Johnny Soprano from the same time period in both the film and the series, even the talented Jon Bernthal, who played Tony's dad in Many Saints, wasn't enough to camouflage the replacement. Along with that, there's a scene in the film that is pivotal to the plot, where Johnny Soprano is arrested at a carnival for conducting mob business and is sentenced to four years in prison, which gave Dickie Moltisanti that chance to mentor Tony out of respect for his associate.

In the series, Johnny Soprano is arrested at the carnival and then released a few hours later. So, the entire premise for how Dickie mentored Tony clashes with the narrative of the show.

We already know that Dickie's fate is to be gunned down in front of his house when Christopher is an infant, which set up the dynamic of Tony and Christopher on the show. Unfortunately, this film never actually explores Tony's introduction to mafia life or any of the lessons he learned that built him into the character that eventually became the boss of North Jersey. Instead, his participation in an upcoming hijack is implied before Dickie is assassinated. There wasn't much of a debate, discussion, or interaction with how Tony actually became involved in organization crime. The series told us that he inherited his way of life from his father, while this prequel teases something deeper with an influence from Moltisanti, but this feature barely scratched the surface of any of that.

The main plot, which was scattered at best, was some background on Dickie Moltisanti, but as mentioned, Christopher's dad wasn't a main focus of any portion of the series so it's very doubtful the audience was clamoring for his origin story. In some respects, this script seems like it picked up the pieces of the Sopranos that remained and made a film based on speculation of a full-length movie after the show wrapped in 2007. The major problem is, the demand and the timing to release such a film would've been more than a decade ago. Instead of a "Sopranos movie," this was a movie vaguely about Sopranos characters. Another key point is that the casting of Michael Gandolfini might've unintentionally given the impression that Many Saints was more about the origins of Tony, but that wasn't the narrative.

In fact, it doesn't really get in-depth on Dickie either. After the two-hour film, you're left without much explanation of what actually brought Tony into the mafia life, background of a secondary character for Dickie, and the impression that the story was incomplete. Even the reveal of who set up the hit on Dickie at the conclusion isn't anything earth-shattering or something that would've drastically effected the foundation for the series. If this film gave the audience the moment where young Tony jumped into organized crime then maybe there would be something useful for the prequel. There are some fun Easter eggs with references to the show, and it was nice that Michael Gandolfini got the chance to play the role of his dad, but Many Saints of Newark is a prime example of a concept that sounded like it might get off the ground on paper, but didn't connect the dots on-screen.