Film Review - The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

 The Many Saints of Newark is the prequel film to the hit TV series the Sopranos which starred the late James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano though this movie takes place in the late 60s and early 70s and sees his son Michael play the young Tony as he navigates his way through life in Newark, New Jersey and all of the mafia and racial tensions that neighbourhood and time period brings.

 

The Many Saints of Newark is quite possibly one of if not the worst film I have seen so far this year and this movie has the same problem that I felt befell Halloween Kills.

 

And that is the script for this movie much like Halloween Kills has too much focus on other stories and characters and not enough focus on where it should be and this movie has way too much focus on other characters played by people like Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Leslie Odom Jr among others and their story and characters aren’t that interesting and they take up so much of the screen time that by the time you get to the young Tony Soprano it feels like too little and too late.

 

And also the way this film is edited and paced feels very off with the first half of the film for the most part feeling very long and drawn out and full of fires and shootouts and family dinners and squabbling that is boring to watch and not all that interesting because it all feels like a distraction to what Sopranos fans (and I’ve only seen a little bit of the TV series) have come for.

 

And that is young Michael Gandolfini channel his late father which he does do very well and he’s easily the best thing about this film but by the time he comes into the film which feels like only in the last hour or so the film has lost you as a viewer and Gandolfini isn’t in a lot of this film when he should have been the core focus and centre of this movie instead of all these other people who you just sit there watching and waiting for them to die from a gunshot off camera and it all feels like a horrible waste.

 

And so that was the Many Saints of Newark and there are few Saints here for fans of the Sopranos or indeed a good gangster film as this fails miserably at both of those tasks with poor unfocused storytelling and boring characters save for Gandolfini who deserved far far better than this, 1 out of 5.