The universe of the greatest series in history has been expanded with a surprisingly faded crime drama about Tony Soprano's growing up in the 60s.
Late 1960s. The Italian American community confidently rules the New Jersey underworld. After the police beat up a black taxi driver, the city begins the typical decade of pogroms and African Americans' marches for equality. Assistant to the local mafioso Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) Harold (Leslie Odom Jr.) also participates in them, who plans to create an African-American crime syndicate and shatter the monopoly of Italo-Americans. Meanwhile, Dickie looks at his father's new girlfriend and spends a lot of time with Anthony Soprano (son of James Gandolfini, Michael) - a teenager who will become the boss of a criminal family in the future.
The first thing that catches your eye on the English-language poster is the huge inscription: Who Made Tony Soprano, eclipsing the not very successful title of the film written at the bottom of the small print. It is only partly true, because Tony himself is not so much here, and the main character of the film is not even his idol Dickie, but the very turbulent era of the late 60s and early 70s, the widespread cruelty of which brought up the future anti-hero "The Sopranos" ... This raises a logical, albeit rhetorical question: wasn’t one of the plot layers of six seasons of the greatest drama in history devoted to how the mother’s nihilism and father’s indifference to upbringing shaped a criminal boss suffering from panic attacks? Alas, for the prequel they came up with a new, cinematically and financially convenient answer to this question.
One can talk for a very long time about the greatness and importance of "The Soprano" - whether it is the creation of the first antihero on TV or a masterful study of the character's subconscious through psychoanalysis. One of the series' not-so-popular merit is how the writers landed the gangster genre and, just a few years after the release of Nicefellas, presented the other side of it. "The Sopranos" is primarily a series about what happens between criminal showdowns: that is, not about gangster romance and murky scams, but about the gray and ordinary to be at the bottom of the bay and get-togethers with accomplices in a strip club. In general, about the routine that is most often deleted from the script.
When, a few years ago, many claimed that Martin Scorsese buried his beloved genre "Irish" - a three-hour nostalgic ode to the golden age of crime and the melancholic loneliness of an aging gangster - they were a little mistaken. Scorsese only added large-scale monumentality to themes and discourses that David Chase had explored in The Sopranos 15 years before him - the creator of the series had hammered a nail into the genre's coffin. This lyrical digression was necessary in order to explain all the irony of the situation, because "The Many Saints of Newark" is a very mediocre copy of the work of Martin Scorsese, which seems to turn a blind eye to "The Sopranos" (although David Chase is the author of the film script), and to that the same "Irishman". And as the cherry on top of this irony - Ray Liotta, whom Scorsese did not take to the company with Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, but who found two roles in this project at once.
"The Many Saints of Newark" is entirely composed of motives and themes chewed on in "The Sopranos": from general hypocrisy and disillusionment with idols to complex dynamics of power in the criminal world and almost literary, full of omens and parallels of fatalism. Coupled with Alan Taylor's non-creative direction (you know, the director of Thor 2: The Kingdom of Darkness and Terminator Genisys), an unpleasantly cold color cue and a script devoid of irony and overloaded with plot branches, it turns out to be a miserable sight: a very chaotic criminal epic, which could only work as a mini-series for 6-8 episodes. Even one of the most interesting lines - the rise of an African-American crime syndicate against the backdrop of a growing movement for equality - ends vaguely and looks more like a prerequisite in order to release a full-length film about the showdown of white men in 2021.
The prequel is by no means worth watching for those who are not familiar with the series. But the fans of "The Sopranos" are unlikely to be able to convince them - moreover, only they will be able to get at least some pleasure from watching, because the film not only brings back young versions of such characters as Pussy, Polly and Silvio, and reminds of the existence of a funny word "Guma", but also develops the idea of Tony's Oedipus complex (Vera Farmiga looks ridiculous in the role of mother, but very much resembles Idi Falco), tells about the fate of Dicky, makes Moltisanti Jr. lying in the grave a narrator and offers an interesting first meeting of Tony with a not accidentally crying baby Christopher. On the other hand, all this is optional and does not in the least change the attitude towards the series fan service.
The filmmakers are currently discussing a possible sequel to the film about 20-year-old Tony with the participation of one of the main writers of the series, Terence Winter. I would like to believe that this will not come to this, but if there is at least one reason why the project should be implemented, it is the participation of Michael Gandolfini - a really talented actor who became almost the only decoration of the indistinct first part. Father would be proud of him.
This article was sponsored by Robert Sutherland.
Comentarios