The history of the television series “The Sopranos” can hardly satisfy as a gangster epic movie: “The Many Saints of Newark” is not very original.
In civilized Central Europe it took until the brightly colored eighties, until the unleashed postmodernism, until someone finally dared to say: that less is not more, but more. A Tony Soprano could have betrayed this wisdom long ago – had the gangster patriarch not been invented for the television series “The Sopranos” at the end of the 90s. More more more; never was enough for the growing needs of one’s own clan and the whole gangster family. No wonder that James Gandolfini’s series character attended psychotherapy from the very first episode.
“The Many Streets of Newark” fades back into Tony Soprano’s teenage days, played by Gandolfini’s son Michael, born in the same year as the television series, 1999. And since street gangsters are not the only ones who love dynasties, two fathers of the “Sopranos” hold the scepter: Inventor David Chase wrote the script with longtime screenwriter Lawrence Konner; As with several episodes, Alan Taylor directs the film. For a long time, Chase had rejected possible sequels as if nothing should mix into the reverberation of the fade to black at the end of the last episode.
The path to the big screen leaves the legacy of one of the most influential television series untouched in this sense. But it also leads into a new, demanding context. Without a doubt, fans of the series will also flock to the cinemas, but this prequel now has to prove itself in the tradition of great gangster episodes – in the tradition of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino.
The equipment at least holds the comparison at least to the later Scorsese, when the film in brownish-warm colors leads into a very restless era: Against the background of the riots during the struggle for civil rights in the late sixties, the Italian immigrant culture also appears in a different light. As uncompromising as the Italian-American gangsters enforce their lifestyle, they do not have to fear any discrimination. Unlike the African Americans who are now fighting for their rights on the streets. If a white executive now criminalizes their struggle for freedom, black gang crime is deliberately lumped together.
What is sorely lacking
But can you really still use the history of the civil rights protests as a background for a conventional white gangster epic in 2021? In any case, black protagonists are sorely lacking in this rapid succession of – it seems – sketchy series content, blended into an only seemingly multi-perspective prism.
The central figure is Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), Christopher Moltisanti’s father, who is admired by the young Tony Soprano. Dickie, in turn, is working on his abusive father, played by Ray Liotta with virtuoso villainy. When he brings a young, attractive bride from a vacation in Italy, the course is set for an impending parricide. In fact, the brutally escalating street protests prove to be the perfect camouflage to make unpleasant people disappear.
This also reduces this historical perspective to a makeshift construction for a not really original gangster story. The two hours of running seem like a compilation of a much longer version, you wouldn’t be surprised if it appeared on a streaming channel in the foreseeable future.
One can currently worry about the future of cinema in view of the popularity of Netflix and Co. This is the example of a hapless hybrid format that is not really convincing either as a cinema or as a television art. Or is it just the pilot of an upcoming spin-off series? Everything seems possible and usable – but far from the fame that the “Sopranos” enjoy as a television series to this day.
The Many Saints of Newark. USA 2021. Directed by Alan Taylor. With Alessandro Nivola, Michael Gandolfini, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga. 120 Min.
