THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (C+) - I would not be the first one to point out that, in both the first episode and the final episode of HBO's epic series "The Sopranos," anti-hero Tony Soprano complains to his therapist about having arrived too late, at the end of "this thing of ours," and wondering aloud if there's even a point to the whole dance anymore, having missed out on the glory days. That same question might bedevil David Chase, who, robbed of his star, James Gandolfini, insists on perpetuating this mob classic by delving into its origins with a pointless prequel.
It is a misfire on several levels. Most glaringly, Chase centers the film around unassuming Dickie Moltisanti (the "many saints" of the title). "Who?" you say. That's the father of Christopher, Tony's nephew and onetime heir apparent, a jerk and a junkie who got unceremoniously snuffed out by Tony in the final season and who sporadically (and needlessly) narrates this film. Dickie Moltisanti (a serviceable but bland Alessandro Nivola ("Who?")) served as a macguffin in the series (Tony convinces Christopher that a retired cop was responsible for killing Dickie and urges Christopher to exact revenge, in the kickoff to the fantastic Season 4), and poor Dickie's not much more than that as the leading character in the prequel. (Although, in a twist near the end, we find out the real culprit behind Dickie's demise. It's a fairly satisfying easter egg to discover.)
The problem here is that Dickie, in these period bubbles of 1967 or 1972, just isn't that interesting a character in the "Sopranos" universe. He violently deals with his daddy issues and steals the young bride his father imported from the old country (the Penelope Cruz clone Michela De Rossi). Dickie is torn between encouraging the bright young Tony to go straight and luring him into the family business. (Tony's dad, Johnny Boy Soprano, is a cipher here, spending most of the movie in prison, a blatant missed opportunity to balance out the series' emphasis on Tony's mommy issues.)
But Chase spends the first half of the two-hour movie engaging in a meticulous set-up -- laying out his characters (many of them familiar from the series, albeit with younger actors) and establishing a milieu among the Newark riots of 1967, a racially nuanced plot device that never really pays off. Chase did a much better job of transporting us to the Sixties in the finely crafted "Not Fade Away" in 2013. Here, there's too much artifice and posturing for the production to rise above the typical period dress-up that most movies engage in.
A significant distraction here is the unavoidable game of Spot Your TV Favorites -- hey, look, it's Uncle Junior, and there's Paulie, worried about someone ruining his manicure or his new leisure suit. Chase has fun with a young balding Silvio Dante (John Magaro, the star of "Not Fade Away"), but all we get is a cartoonish impression of the mugging consigliere made famous by Steven van Zandt. At first it's fun to test your knowledge of side characters, like high school pal and future restaurateur Artie Buco, or to finally glimpse a teenage Carmela Soprano (nee De Angelis). But, as others have pointed out, this too often reeks of a "Muppet Babies" gimmick, bordering on parody.
Another distraction is the presence of Ray Liotta as both Dickie's father and as the father's twin brother who, having long ago sacrificed for the family, has found a Zen grace while serving out a life sentence for the murder of a made man. The lazy casting of Liotta, especially as the viciously brutal "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti, merely reminds us of the "Goodfellas" lineage that the original series was subverting but that the film, to its detriment, falls back on. That said, Liotta is a standout in the second hour as the enlightened conscience of his nephew Dickie. The good it does the dull young man.
We paused this movie briefly at the 90-minute mark for a quick bathroom break, and it gave me a few minutes to contemplate some of the above problems -- what is the plot; what is the point; what exactly is Chase trying to accomplish, besides watering down the legacy of the greatest TV series of all time. The final reel offered no redemption.
The biggest shortcoming, though, is the plot, to the extent there is one. Dickie is just not an interesting guy. He's another finely coifed greaser who snuffs out loved ones during fits of anger and who couldn't care less about his wife and the son who would play such a critical role in the series. Chase botches Dickie's connection to teenage Tony (Michael Gandolfini, James' son, who's mostly just OK), and the actors never form a believable bond; thus any insight into Tony's choice to join the mob is lost in the muddle. And Dickie's supposed reaching across racial lines with Harold (Leslie Odom Jr.) feels shoehorned at first and an afterthought by the end. I mean, really ... Dickie Moltisanti -- why him?
Vera Farmiga is much more interesting as Tony's evil mother, Livia. Farmiga seems to be channeling Edie Falco's Carmela as much as Nancy Marchand's Livia, providing a juicy Freudian undertone to the filial relationship we marveled at in Season 1. It's one of the few examples of Chase actually adding a fresh layer of storytelling here. Of course, Chase is ham-handed with a scene of Tony spilling his guts to a guidance counselor (Talia Balsam), a too-obvious parallel to the series' central conceit of mobster Tony opening up to Dr. Melfi. (The guidance counselor tries to convince Livia that her son is a born leader, but the old lady swats away the idea with that famous wave of her hand.)
There is precious little insight to be gleaned here. The end of "The Sopranos" was 14 years ago, a lifetime in
mob-movie years. The series could have been the final whack on a tired genre and an era. Going even further back in time is a fool's errand. (And overloading the soundtrack with treadworn songs only reminds us of how much Martin Scorsese has pounded this species into submission.)
Chase could do little wrong at the helm of the series' six (really seven) seasons, but here he is reduced to explaining away both the mother-son relationship and Tony's fateful decision to go crooked by having us believe that Tony and Uncle Dickie tried but failed to get Livia on the meds she needed. If only Tony's mother, back in the '70s, had had access to the anti-depressants that Tony so freely gulped at the turn of the millennium, we could have avoided this whole thing of theirs.
Not only is Chase's prequel, in the end, unnecessary, but it also calls into question the very being of the brilliant TV epic he bequeathed to the world. That tingle you experience as the familiar theme song bubbles up just before the final credits roll might feel like a tinge of regret. Shame about it.
BONUS TRACK
If you haven't seen the series finale of "The Sopranos" from 2007, read no further. Below is my deadline review of that last episode for the Albuquerque Tribune:
A big `Sopranos' finale? Just you fuhgeddaboudit!
By J.A. Montalbano
Monday, June 11, 2007
In the end, we realize life is a journey. Or maybe it's just a Journey song.
To the strains of "Don't Stop Believin' " - and then to an ominous black screen that must have had millions cursing their cable provider before the credits finally rolled in silence - "The Sopranos" faded into history.
"Is this all there is?" Tony Soprano wondered to his shrink earlier this season. Some viewers probably asked the same thing after Sunday's finale on HBO. Or maybe they phrased it more like "Are you freakin' kidding me?"
In his predictably unpredictable manner, series creator David Chase (who wrote and directed the swan song) toned down the violence and played up the mundane. Despite having a target on his back the whole episode, Tony was constantly joking. He complained about his mother to a new psychiatrist and nagged his son about household chores.
(SNITCH ALERT: We're about to spill the beans about Sunday night's series finale. So, if you didn't watch it - and how could you have waited this long? - come back and finish reading later.)
In the end, Tony outfoxed his rival, Phil Leotardo, by making a deal with the Brooklyn boss's underlings and finally putting to good use the previous Brooklyn leader's inept son, Little Carmine, as broker.
Leotardo's execution in front of his wife and grandchildren was the only violence in the episode. (And not only did he get shot, but the rear wheel of one of those ubiquitous SUVs splattered his head.)
In the series' final scene, Tony - informed he faces almost certain indictment because one of his captains, Carlo, is talking to the feds - sits in a diner, waiting for his family to arrive. He flips through the selections on the tableside jukebox - "This Magic Moment," "Magic Man," Tony Bennett, classic rock - reminding us how integral the show's soundtrack has always been.
His family members show up one by one. Doom hangs in the air amid their ordinary banter. As the Journey song blares, we see suspicious characters come and go. Daughter Meadow is the last one to arrive, and she is flustered trying to parallel park.
Meadow, seemingly in a panic, runs toward the restaurant's front door. Was she merely worried about being late? Had she just found out she's pregnant? Does she know something's about to happen in the restaurant?
As Tony looks up to see his daughter arrive and Steve Perry croons "Don't stop," the screen goes black and silent for 10 seconds. Then the credits. The music's over.
Just another family dinner and a bittersweet ending? Or did that black screen mean the shady guy who went to the men's room came out with a gun, "Godfather"-style, and Tony didn't see it coming?
Or was it the rest of us who just didn't see it coming?
The final episode played with stereotypes, big and small, as if to remind us that Chase himself never forgot that he took guff for eight years because of how he depicted his fellow Italian-Americans. The finale had us swimming in images that tripped our biases and toyed with expectations:
Phil's right-hand man Butch walks a couple of blocks while talking on the phone, hangs up and stands perplexed amid a sea of Asian faces. (Have you been to Little Italy in Manhattan lately?)
Anthony Jr. wants to study Arabic and join the war in Afghanistan. In the end, though, he takes a job as a gofer on a movie set, finally snapping out of his season-long slouch toward Bethlehem.
Meadow wants to fight for civil rights because of the injustices she has seen her dad and other Italian-Americans put up with.
We get TV footage of President Bush dancing in Africa.
Tony's favorite FBI agent (and our first line of defense against the terrorists) has a nagging wife, cheats on her, helps Tony track down his rival and then, when told of Phil's hit, exhorts, "Damn, we're gonna win this thing."
And the people in the restaurant in that final scene - any one of them or none of them could have popped Tony at a moment's notice: a trucker in a "USA" cap; two black kids milling about; the jittery guy at the counter. Or maybe the table full of Boy Scouts could have saved his life.
For those who wanted Tony brought down in a hail of bullets or hauled off to jail by the FBI, Chase reminded us that life is neither that messy nor that neat.
The final nine episodes of "The Sopranos" were brilliant for reminding us that Tony wasn't a nice guy, to say the least, and never would be.
He wasn't going to see the light, despite his Buddhist fever dreams and his peyote-fueled exultation to the sunrise, "I get it!" (In the finale, he stares up at the sun while raking leaves in the backyard.)
He was brutal this year. When he wasn't bashing in the teeth of a goon who dissed his daughter or mocking his own son who was descending into a suicidal stupor, Tony was just a callous bully. With his own hands he killed his chosen successor, Christopher, and then went out to Vegas to sleep with one of Christopher's girlfriends, for good measure.
But his true sociopathic pettiness was re-established in the first of the final nine episodes. Seething over a drunken brawl with brother-in-law Bobby Baccalieri, Tony got revenge by ordering Bobby to carry out his first hit, essentially sealing the man-child's doom.
That first episode this year also brought home the bitter irony inherent to the Mafia: Family is everything. Unless it's your biological family we're talking about - parents, siblings, wife, children - because those loved ones are just around for blame and recriminations.
Not that you fared any better if you were Tony's "brother," Big Pussy; his "son," Christopher; or his "father," Hesh. Not to mention the actual cousin he blew away with a shotgun in Season 5.
Series guru Chase dawdled during last year's 12-episode run-up, trying fans' patience with Tony's extended coma, the never-ending saga of gay mobster Vito and other apparent dead ends. But this year, the storytelling was economic and powerful.
One by one, Chase showed us the fate of key characters. We saw psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi questioning her years of working with Tony; Paulie vegging out to "Three's Company" or sunning himself in front of Satriale's; Johnny Sacrimoni unrepentant while he lay dying of cancer; and Christopher drug-addled and gurgling for his final breath.
Chase was telling us very clearly that it's not pretty at the end for these guys. Most of them probably would have taken a hero's bullet in the head years ago to be spared such indignities. The sudden black screen to the slow fade.
Is it a victory to be sitting in a New Jersey diner munching on onion rings and listening to classic rock?
In Sunday's penultimate scene, Tony visits Uncle Junior, who sits toothless in a state-run nursing home, staring at the birds outside his window. Nothing Tony says registers with Junior. Not the whereabouts of his stash; not that little incident where he shot his nephew. That is, until Tony utters this phrase: "This thing of ours."
Tony is reminding the old man that Tony's father and Junior once ran things in New Jersey.
"We did?" Junior says sweetly. "Hmm. That's nice."
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