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    ‘The Many Saints of Newark’ Review: The Best Really Is Over

    In the movie prequel to “The Sopranos,” Tony returns as a child who learns to navigate his families on a difficult road to mob power.Tony Soprano, the mob boss in “The Sopranos,” was many things: husband, father, animal lover, lady-killer, sociopathic capitalist, pop-culture sensation. Americans like their villains on the soft side, and Tony famously suffered from inner turmoil, manifested in panic attacks, to go with the blood on his hands. A mobster in therapy — with a sexy female shrink, no less — generated bountiful narrative tension, as did his overlapping gangland and extended families. All told, Tony was a perfect distillation of two great American passions: self-improvement and getting away with murder.Created by David Chase, “The Sopranos” faded to enigmatic black in 2007, though it endures, including on HBO, its original home for six seasons. As a rule, we use the present tense when writing about fiction: Characters exist in the eternal now, or that’s the idea. But the death of James Gandolfini, who played Tony, complicates this because he and the show were interchangeable. With his lucid, quicksilver expressivity and a hulking, powerfully threatening physicality, Gandolfini made flesh Tony’s internal struggle, filling a potential cartoon with soul and, by extension, giving greater depth to the show. His absence is why I think of his signature character in the past tense.It’s also a reason the movie spinoff “The Many Saints of Newark,” a busy, unnecessary, disappointingly ordinary origin story, doesn’t work. The movie certainly has pedigree. It was written by Chase with Lawrence Konner, who wrote a few episodes of “The Sopranos,” and directed by Alan Taylor, another series veteran. Jumping between time periods, it tracks the sentimental education (moral and emotional) of the young Tony, who in 1967 is an 11-year-old pipsqueak played by William Ludwig. After a lot of introductions and plot developments, the story jumps to Tony at 16, now played by Gandolfini’s son, Michael, who bears a striking resemblance to his father.The movie means to show how and why the child became the man we never see but who casts a deep shadow. Following along with this evolutionary journey will be easier for those who watched “The Sopranos,” week after week, for 86 episodes of detailed, intimate, explanatory character development. Whatever your familiarity with the series, you may soon find yourself wondering why the filmmakers decided the way to fill in Tony’s past was to delve into his early relationship with a dreary, clichéd surrogate father rather than, say, his monstrous mother, Livia (immortalized in the show by Nancy Marchand and played here by Vera Farmiga with a prodigious prosthetic nose).Tony’s symbolic dad in “Saints” is Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola, who can’t hold the center), a midlevel mob guy and father to the adult Tony’s mentee, Christopher, the drug-addled distant cousin and screw-up played by Michael Imperioli. Dickie never appeared onscreen in “The Sopranos,” but in the movie he takes on crucial twinned roles as Tony’s champion and as a progenitor of the violent, emotionally addled mobster Tony later becomes. It’s never clear why Dickie has a soft spot for the kid, other than it gives Tony a narratively convenient, relatively benign replacement for his more floridly violent, often absent dad. Mostly Dickie is a new toy that the filmmakers can play with.Too bad he’s right off the shelf. An amalgam of wiseguy clichés wrapped in a period-appropriate package, Dickie enters a crowded field of movie mob guys who are rarely as interesting as their makers believe. He has all the prerequisites, from the slick car to the sleek suits, and comes burdened with the usual work and women problems. Some of these headaches produce tension and promising interest, most notably Dickie’s relationship with a restless Black employee, Harold McBrayer (a nuanced, bristling Leslie Odom Jr.), whose discontent is mirrored, or is meant to be, by unrest that is based on what happened in Newark in 1967 after the arrest of a Black man.Both Harold’s prominence and the relatively few racist slurs dropped here are an index of the different cultural climates in which the movie and the show opened. Mobsters are going to mobster (bada-bing), but the language they use and the barbarisms they commit have been attenuated. And while the movie tries to engage race, its efforts are wan, cautious. By contrast, the women remain pretty much the same nagging wives, dutiful daughters and hot girlfriends, a.k.a. goomahs (bada-boom). The most important of these is a beauty, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), who’s brought from Italy by Dickie’s father (Ray Liotta) to be his wife; mostly, she’s around to flash booty and stir up Oedipal trouble.Movie spinoffs can be tough to pull off. Nothing felt at stake when I watched, oh, the first “Brady Bunch” movie, but its source material wasn’t a critical fetish, something that inspired excited discussions on masculinity, the latest golden age of television and the effect on the industry. “The Sopranos,” though, was too good, too memorable, and its hold on the popular imagination remains unshakable. It still casts a spell, and the movie knows it, which is why it sticks to the tired template of a boy’s own story rather than taking a radical turn, like revisiting Tony’s world from Giuseppina’s or Livia’s or Harold’s points of view. In the end, the best thing about “The Many Saints of Newark” is that it makes you think about “The Sopranos,” but that’s also the worst thing about it.The Many Saints of NewarkRated R for Mafia violence. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters and on HBO Max. More

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    'The Many Saints of Newark': A Guide to the ‘Sopranos’ Family Tree

    A guide to the many mobsters of “The Many Saints of Newark” and how they prefigure the characters in the beloved series about New Jersey wiseguys.In the world of “The Sopranos,” there’s family, and then there’s “family” — those hard-won, deep-seated mob ties that make spiritual relations of every member of the Italian American mafia. Over the course of six seasons, that acclaimed HBO drama introduced us to several dozen members of New Jersey’s powerful DiMeo crime family, including its brilliant and fascinating kingpin, Tony Soprano, and the various uncles, cousins, rivals and lovers who fill out the engrossing drama of the character’s fraught, volatile life.“The Many Saints of Newark” is a prequel, set roughly 30 years before the start of the show, beginning in the late 1960s and spanning half a decade. Billed as a Tony Soprano origin story, it instead focuses largely on Dickie Moltisanti, a close friend and associate of the family who, seeing great potential in Tony, takes the young Soprano boy under his wing.“Many Saints” is a treat for “Sopranos” fans, full of subtle references to series lore and answers to longstanding questions, and it’s a delight to see younger versions of familiar faces. But the movie doesn’t make much of an effort to explain characters or their relationships to the uninitiated, and if it’s been a while since your last “Sopranos” binge, you may find it difficult to place each and every member of the family.Before “Many Saints” arrives in cinemas and on HBO Max on Oct. 1, here is a guide to who’s who in the New Jersey mob world.Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini, Michael Gandolfini)“The Sopranos” begins as the respected but beleaguered Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano enters therapy to get a handle on a series of increasingly severe panic attacks. “Many Saints” reveals Tony as a bright, charismatic teenager with ambitions to go to college and avoid the life of crime that is his ultimate destiny. Immortalized by James Gandolfini on the show, he’s played in the prequel by Gandolfini’s real-life son, Michael.In “Many Saints,” Alessandro Nivola plays the father of a key character in “The Sopranos,” Christopher Moltisanti.Warner Bros.Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola)Once an important and admired leader in the Jersey mafia, Dickie Moltisanti is killed long before the events of “The Sopranos,” under circumstances described — though never actually confirmed — as part of a story arc in the show’s fourth season. Dickie is the protagonist of “Many Saints,” and much about the tragedy of his life and death is disclosed in ways that longtime “Sopranos” fans will find thoroughly shocking. Though not family by blood, he’s welcomed as a brother by Junior Soprano and becomes an influential father figure to young Tony.Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli)Born around the time “Many Saints” is set, Christopher appears in the film only briefly, as a baby, in a scene with much foreboding. Son of Dickie and distant cousin of Tony’s wife, Carmela, he’s considered part of the Soprano family, usually referred to as Tony’s nephew. One of the main characters of the series, Christopher is a kind of scrappy ne’er-do-well whom Tony dreams of molding as his protégé — a dream often thwarted, throughout the series, by Chrissy’s tendency to screw up.Michael Gandolfini, left, and Jon Berthal in the prequel.Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano (Joseph Siravo, Jon Bernthal)Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano, Tony’s father, died of natural causes in the late ’80s, before the events of “The Sopranos,” and is glimpsed in the series only in flashbacks; one of those flashbacks is restaged in “Many Saints,” with Jon Bernthal now playing the Soprano patriarch in place of the show’s Joseph Siravo. A big shot in the mob, he spent much of Tony’s adolescence in prison, entrusting Dickie to look after the boy while he’s inside.Corrado “Junior” Soprano (Dominic Chianese, Corey Stoll)A perennial thorn in Tony’s side, Corrado Soprano, better known as Junior, is Johnny Boy’s brother, and partly helps raise Tony while Johnny Boy is serving time. In “The Sopranos,” Junior (Dominic Chianese) is conniving and always jockeying for power, and as portrayed by Corey Stoll in “Many Saints,” he is no less ruthless or power-hungry as a younger man, to no one’s surprise. His relationship with Tony has been strained ever since he doubted the young Soprano’s capacity to become a varsity athlete.“Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti (Ray Liotta)Dickie’s father, and Christopher’s grandfather, “Hollywood” Dick looms over “Many Saints” with a biting, portentous menace. Although he never appears and virtually never comes up in “The Sopranos,” his actions in the prequel set in motion many of the events that defined the series. Corey Stoll and Vera Farmiga in the film.Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand, Vera Farmiga)Tony’s mother, played in the series by Nancy Marchand, is one of the colossal psychic stressors that drive Tony into therapy, and in “Many Saints,” we see the long-suffering woman back when she still had the faintest glimmer of warmth. Vera Farmiga channels the younger version of the character with stunning accuracy.Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt, John Magaro)A fixture of the series, Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt) is one of Tony’s top lieutenants and most trusted advisers. “Many Saints” finds him played by John Magaro and working with similar diligence under Dickie, as well as taking a personal liking to the young Tony, who he observes has a great deal of potential. We get some long-awaited answers about the character’s natural hairline.Paulie Gualtieri (Tony Sirico, Billy Magnussen)Paulie Gualtieri, sometimes known as Paulie Walnuts, is a “Sopranos” fan favorite, beloved for his stylized Italian mannerisms and no-bull attitude. Like Silvio, Paulie is a faithful lieutenant of Tony’s on the series (where he’s played by Tony Sirico) and works closely with Dickie in “Many Saints” (when Billy Magnussen takes the role).Ray Liotta, left, Joey “CoCo” Diaz, Corey Stoll, Samson Moeakiola and Billy Magnussen in “Many Saints.”Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore, Samson Moeakiola)The colorfully nicknamed “Big Pussy” is another lieutenant in the New Jersey mafia who works for Dickie (Samson Moeakiola in the film) and later Tony (Vincent Pastore in the series). Although he has a small role in “Many Saints,” he goes on to be an important figure in Tony’s life, with his betrayal of the family forming the heart of the show’s second season.Janice Soprano (Aida Turturro, Mattea Conforti)Sister to Tony, and daughter to Johnny Boy and Livia, she’s resented by Tony as the family’s golden child, much spoiled and doted on. In the film, she’s played by Mattea Conforti, who grows up to be Aida Turturro in the series. More