My Review of "The Many Saints of Newark"

The Many Saints of Newark came out last year in 2021 with much anticipation. I admittedly did not really look forward to this movie at all because at the time I had never seen the Sopranos TV show that its based off of. Now that I've finally finished the Sopranos I now have a better understanding of why people were hotly anticipating this movie. With the TV show fresh in my mind I knew I would have a better grasp of the movie now than later.

This movie starts off with a narration from Chris Moltisanti. If you watched the TV show you'd know that he was a main character that was tragically killed by Tony Soprano in the last season. The camera pans over his family plot in the cemetery while he is introducing the story.

What I didn't expect was that this movie is about Chris' father Dick Moltisanti and has very little to do with Tony and the Soprano family. This was a huge unexpected turn for me because the commercials had always focused on the young Tony Soprano. Yes he's in there but he's pretty much a side story to the overall big picture.

Dick isn't even the boss of the family. Tony's father Johnny is the head of the family. Dick however is a made man that runs the area that Tony will eventually take over years from this movie. So you'll see a lot of familiar faces that you recognize from the show.

All of these actors that play our favorites such as Sil, Pussy, Pauly and even Junior do a great job. They take all of the familiar mannerisms and personality traits we know from the TV show. Each one of them are instantly recognizable just from their demeaner throughout the movie.

I do have some gripes about some of the characters though. We know that this movie is set in New Jersey and most of them are from New Jersey however it's really weird when you notice that some of the New Jersey accent's are missing from certain characters. It seemed a little out of place.

Also the music in this movie are a big part of the story. The only problem is that at times it overtakes the movie. I liked all the songs that they selected for this movie however I found that at times it was overemphasized. You'd have a number of montages throughout the runtime of this show that just emphasized the songs. Sometimes the songs would be louder or equal to the volume of the dialogue and was extremely distracting.

They did get some things right in this movie though. Going back into time they were able to reenact a lot of the stories that were told throughout the TV show. There are a few memorable stories that play out in this movie that you'll instantly recognize.

Not only did they add a few of those stories in but they had a whole buttload of nods and jokes of the TV series. They play on some of the situations where only the audience would understand the joke. We know what the future has in store for these characters.

A lot of this movie was about the racial and gender injustices. I know what they were getting at but at certain moments it sort of felt preachy. They're good points to make but these aspects were about to cross the line between storytelling and activism. At points I felt like their cause was overshadowing the main story. It really messed up with the pacing of the movie.

This movie even ends off in a similar fashion that the original TV ends. I'm not saying that all movies should have a satisfying ending but it would have been nice. I'm not too surprised that the movie ended the way that it did but it kind of brought up more questions that would potentially ask for a sequel. If you're going to make a TV show do it. Just don't make movies that feel like TV shows.

Overall, this was entertaining enough for me to sit through it. I got more satisfaction from it because I saw the TV show recently. Those that haven't seen the TV show or haven't seen the show in a long time might need to pass. It really wasn't what I was expecting but yet I wasn't surprised at what we got. This does sort of fit the Sopranos aesthetic and story telling template. I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. Watch this only if you have seen the Sopranos because the references may go way over your head.