Les saints criminels de Newark

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 :)

Jon Bernthal said this film isn't like the Sopranos, and I can see what he means. I walked in thinking this would focus on Tony Sopranos' route to becoming who he is when we meet him in the first episode of the Sopranos, but instead, it focuses on Christopher's dad, Dickie Moltisanti.

The acting is superb, but the plot is thin. Dickie is not a particularly interesting character. In fact, I think focusing on Johnny Soprano would've made for a way more gripping film. What we end up with is something half-baked, more of a mini series than a stand-alone film. I have to admit, when the credits started coming up, I was thinking, "Is this it?"

For a Sopranos fan, it's worth a watch, but ultimately, it was underwhelming.

Remember when "The Sopranos" took the television show to new narrative heights? Remember when each new episode was more anxiously awaited than any new movie? Remember when you wished more movies could be told as TV series or miniseries on HBO or Showtime, so that they could go into more detail, and take their time developing?

It is ironic that the show that surpassed film would then go back to that form, and all the more ironic that the resultant film doesn't hold a candle to the TV show. We hung on every moment of "Sopranos". People watch and re-watch scenes noticing tell-tale placement of actors in similar positions to where the actors were in prior scenes. They go over dialogue, building profiles of characters who never even appear on the show, but we get to know them better than most on-screen characters in other shows.

The legendary Dickie Moltisanti was oft mentioned on the show, and here we finally get to see him, played by one of the few Italian-American actors who isn't famous for mob roles, Alessandro Nivola. For such a revered figure, he turns out to be a dead end, not emerging with any discernible personality. That should be okay though, because of course this movie shows us younger versions of characters we all know and oddly love, such as Silvio Dante, Paulie Walnuts, Uncle Junior. Except - wait a minute. None of them say or do anything interesting here. The guy who plays Silvio particularly just seems to be trying as hard as he can to ape Steve Van Zandt. You can never take him seriously as the character. And how is Billy Magnussen's Paulie Walnuts so boring? He stole every scene on "The Sopranos". Here he does nothing.

"The Sopranos". So many great lines. So many great scenes. You can watch YouTubes of them for hours without getting bored. "The Many Saints of Newark" barely captured my interest at all. David Chase has gone on record saying that he had his doubts about whether a film based on his classic television series would have worked. He should have trusted this instinct.

I think I'm right in saying that this is another one of the films that is going to open on "HBO Max" in the States, rather than widely at the cinema. Here in the UK, we have had a cinematic release and as a fan of "The Sopranos" I jumped at the chance go. Though I wouldn't go as far as to say I was disappointed, I came away unsure as to the point of what I'd seen.

Richard Moltisanti (Allesandro Nivola) is a gangster, running numbers and trafficking stolen goods in Newark. Initially struggling to conceive a child of his own, he acts like a second father to the son of his friend Johnny Boy Soprano (Jon Bernthal). Young Tony (William Ludwig/Michael Gandolfini) has an unstable homelife and is beginning to act out at school. Dickie Moltisanti has other issues though, such as the rise of black gangs in the neighbourhood following the riots of 1967 and his attraction to his father's young new wife, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi).

It's not that this is bad. By no means is it bad. The performances are excellent, the impressions of established characters are nicely done, the recreation of the 1960's and 1970's is really well done. It's that I felt like I was watching what should have been at least three seasons of television, with the fast forward button on. It's interesting to see that this is being sold as "The formative years of Tony Soprano" when really that's quite a small part of the overall film, barely even a third of it, I'd say. It's very much the Dickie Moltisanti story, narrated from beyond the grave, by his son. It's his relations that make up the bulk of the story and not just his relationship with Tony, but also with his father played by Ray Liotta, his new step mother, a low level runner called Harold McBrayer, played by Leslie Odom Jr and with the rest of the family - both actual and metaphorical.

There are quite a few different plot points to the film, but all are shallowly dealt with as they only have two hours to play out, rather than thirty. It's like watching a wrap up film for a cancelled TV show where the writers say, "this is where we would have gone". None of the betrayals or murders play that heavy as we don't spend enough time with the characters to get more than a basic feel about who they are.

Again, I don't want to bang on as if what's here isn't good. It is, and I really hope if finally allows Allesandro Nivola to get some meatier roles again, and, on the smaller screen, it might seem more fitting than it does at the Cinema. But I came away wishing I could have the rest of this, rather than just the tiny taster menu that was on offer.

There's no mafia story in this movie and the plot is very weak, focusing on irrelevant characters for too long but failling to create any connection to these characters.

We have a bunch of mafia guys with no actual enemies. A mistress we don't really care about, since the lead character doesn't seem to really. A "business associate" turned rival that only Dickie really interacts with and in the end doesn't seem relevant to anything.

The Sopranos connection is weak at best, except for the Junior stuff, but even that is fan service done poorly. Here's that line from the show "wink wink".

We do get to find out what happened to Dickie, but that would've meant more if it turned out Tony knew when he sent Christopher after his dad's killer in the show.

Having Tony Soprano as a teenager wandering through the movie here and there but not really being a part of him was a waste.

Prequels are hard, unless you go back far enough where none of the characters are really relevant, you end up winking at the audience and mentioning things that happened instead of focusing on the story.

This movie made me appreciate what Better Call Saul does even more.

Showing us events that we "heard" about, introducing characters we already knew and maybe know where they end up, showing what made a character act a certain way, how they got that scar, it's all fun and good fan service, but you need a story. This movie didn't really have one.