The Many Saints of Newark Review - Dry & Flat Execution

Before I get started, I want to make something clear: I've never seen The Sopranos. I'm watching this as an introduction of sorts and fitting since it's a prequel to the show.

That said, besides the navigation of the story and some fair cinematography (in its color palette mostly), this is flooded with issues.

To start it off, the pacing of it throughout makes this rather uninteresting. It lays the foundation for what will mostly become a very bland atmosphere. And with that, the engagement of it in general is too mediocre and gets rather boring at times. If it's consistent in anything, it's in its commitment to staying and bathing in this hollow environment.

There's no real energy to the film either. Scenes just happen and don't have much buildup that carries much weight or development, which leads to my biggest issue with the film: the script.

The script is so on the nose and basic. I've never seen The Sopranos personally and even I know the foreshadowing they were trying to do; particularly with Tony. It makes itself so obvious and with that too predictable. It lacks the cleverness and grip that the story clearly needs to become investing. It's very straight forward and dry in its writing, which led to mostly dull moments throughout.

Following up from that, the film has a hard time juggling multiple storylines. None of the stories really hold merit as the filmmaker doesn't know how to give balance to the story at hand to create emotional impact. The navigation itself is interesting but the stories themselves are not as engaging.

More so with the script, unfortunately, we have a plethora of unlikable characters to follow. I don't care if the character is a bad person or not. If I don't like them at all, they're not good characters. A well written character is one that the audience can care about regardless if they're bad people or not. Breaking Bad was able to accomplish this and I'm pretty sure The Sopranos did also. Most of the characters here are just straight up jerks and bullies. They're not as well rounded as they should be.

In talking about the performances, I felt that some of the ensemble was miscast and underused. Leslie Odom Jr and Alessandro Nivola are the best but it's not saying a lot. Ray Liotta felt very out of place and wasn't playing the parts as well as he could while Jon Bernthal felt to be needed more as his presence gave some personality to a lot of the scenes.

Michael Gandolfini was fine but not great. I wouldn't say he's underused as his screen time is what I should have expected but the marketing for this was deceiving as the main piece of all the marketing (down to the poster) was Michael playing his late father's part. And he does fine with what he had but nothing noteworthy either.

Lastly, technically speaking, the audio levels seem off at some points. The music is louder than the dialogue itself and makes it hard to hear what the characters are saying sometimes. I also am curious if most of it was ADR because some of it sounds like it was done in post.

In the end, this felt more like it was trying to be Goodfellas than The Sopranos (and I've never seen the show). From a huge lack of engagement, bland atmosphere, questionable technical efforts, unlikable characters and a very dull script, The Many Saints of Newark really feels like it needed more time to refine and build for the product we have in front of us is very flawed and the flattest film I've personally seen this year so far. It's not terrible but very disappointing.

Grade: D+