Los Santos De La Mafia

Why was half the film about racial tensions and a black gangster? What was this huge inspiration Dickie gave to Tony? How is this co written by the creator of the Sopranos?

If this movie had nothing to do with the Sopranos it would be mediocre with an overly abrupt ending. Compared to a similar movie like A Bronx tale it has no soul.

But as a prequel to the Sopranos it is badly written, paced, and at times boring.

Some of the performances were good, and you can tell the actors really tried their best to portray their older counterpart. But ultimately most come off as caricatures (especially Silvio). Michael Gandolfini is just too young an actor to pull off Tony, but he does try.

The black characters subplot was completely unnecessary, only really planting a seed where someone does something unbelievably stupid at a beach (you'll see what I mean). Where does he fit in the Sopranos tale? What the hell is Frank Lucas doing here? Did I just watch beat poetry in a Sopranos movie?

I admit I haven't seen the show in a few years, but have watched it several times start to finish. This is beyond subpar by comparison.

What happened David Chase? Did you lose a bet with the HBO execs?

If the Sopranos had relied on this film to launch the tv series, the show would never had been released.

Its an average film, neither offensive to the brain nor exhilarating, but it fails miserably to develop any excitement to the 'coming' of Tony.

If you want to watch a movie about growing up to become a gangster...watch Goodfellas :)

They made a movie about Dickie Moltisanti. Most Soprano fans couldn't give a damn about Dickie. He's a background character.

Fans wanted a show about Tony Soprano. The movie made Tony a background character. We learned more about Tony's childhood from the original show than we do during this movie.

With the exception of one scene, we don't even know anything about Tony's relationship with his father.

It's puzzling. The original show was all about the complexity of family dynamics. This movie was a B-rate gangster flick sidetracked by a plot about a black gangster during a time in the 60's when there would have been minimal interaction between street gangs & mob bosses.

The fans wanted a Tony Soprano coming of age Story. Instead the producers delivered a 2 hour film with 14 minutes of Tony Soprano flashbacks.

This coming from a huge Sopranos fan who as many people, been looking forward to this movie with great anticipation. Afterall mr. Chase being involved ought to almost guarantee quality.

However, then you start reading about some delays and production trouble, then Chase was not directing it, was not directly writing the script, and so on and so forth... Just one after another misteps from the studio.

So we got what we get in 90% nowadays. Average, check-patronizing-woke boxes flick, shallow characters (that are basically skimmed through), incoherent jumping story and many pretentious moments trying to be more than they are.

Nothing like the Sopranos, where every moment was more than what it appeared at first, where characters were all interesting and multilayered and each episode was an intriguing story, 10 or 20 times what this movie is.

A huge disappointment, not even close to the quality of Sopranos. Half of the movie is as is usual today forced political patronizing and blaming white people for everything, which is the last thing I expected from a Chase "product", that he would sell out like this to please others. Also in general it is a bad mob flick with too much jumping and no focus.

I dont know if Chase was forced into a position with no say or he sold out but unless told, I would never belive a person who created Sopranos could also be involved with this travesty of a movie.

Really? All that talent and money, and yet overall this is a meandering narrative mess that doesn't know what story it wants to tell. It is more or less a hodgepodge of cameos by younger versions of the TV series characters superimposed over a laughably shallow and revisionist narrative on the riots that destroyed Newark NJ.

The closest analogy I can give is the shockingly bad "Deadwood: The Movie" which was an insult to everyone who enjoyed the Deadwood series. It makes me profoundly grateful that no "movie" was made following "Rome" or Boardwalk Empire."