#The Sopranos Prequel Is A Bloody Deconstruction Of The Mob Movie

As for Dickie himself, he’s a man at war with his own soul, his own corrupt nature. He wants to believe he’s a good guy — he coaches little league for blind kids; he takes an interest in raising his nephew Tony when Tony’s father Johnny (Jon Bernthal) goes off to jail; he’s free and loose with handing out $100 bills from the huge wad of cash he keeps in his pocket. But he’s also a monstrous figure with a bloody temper. There are multiple occasions throughout the film where Dickie violently, and fatally, lashes out at people he’s close to. Nivola does great work handling the character’s unstable nature, playing Dickie not as a nutjob who can fly off the handle like Joe Pesci in “GoodFellas,” but more like a man who wants to pretend he’s calm and collected when he’s anything but.

This is the inherent nature of many of the characters here. These are violent men who do terrible things, and then try to justify the terrible things they’ve done. In their minds, they’re not bad guys — they’re just misunderstood. And they’re often living double lives. Dickie is married, but he’s also in the middle of an affair with his much, much younger stepmother (Michela De Rossi), an immigrant fresh off the boat from Italy. He also pays secret visits to his incarcerated uncle (Ray Liotta), another act he considers a good deed that washes away his sins. The conversations between Dickie and his uncle recall the conversations between Tony and Dr. Melfi on “The Sopranos” — they’re therapy sessions, where Dickie gets potentially helpful advice that he then ignores. He can’t escape the violent existence he’s ingrained himself into.

Bursts of that violence come frequently here, often with both shocking and ghastly results. Power tools are taken to mouths, heads rupture due to shotgun blasts, lives are snuffed out in the blink of an eye. And then there are more insidious moments. There’s a truly brilliant sequence that starts off loving and charming, with two characters (I’m being vague to avoid spoilers) having a sexual tryst in a public bathroom while Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” plays romantically over the soundtrack. It’s sweet and light, and even a little sexy. But one wrong word from one of the two lovers triggers a burst of cold, bleak violence that saps away any good vibes the previous moments might have created.

As for the young Tony Soprano, he’s played here by Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini, who originated the role on “The Sopranos,” and turned the part into one of the greatest TV characters of all time. Those are huge shoes to fill, and it must not have been easy for the younger Gandolfini to channel his late father. The results are often eerie — Gandolfini looks a heck of a lot like his dad, and he nails the older Gandolfini’s mannerisms and diction to the point where there are times when it genuinely feels like we’re just looking at a younger James Gandolfini up on the screen.

The Tony here isn’t the full-blown monster we saw on “The Sopranos,” but we can see he’s already headed down that path. Tests from school indicate he’s a bright kid, but he doesn’t apply himself at all and would rather pull off petty crimes — like when he and his friends steal a Mister Softee ice cream truck. (“We all do stuff like that when we’re kids,” Tony’s father helpfully offers. “Beat up the Mister Softee man.”)

It doesn’t help that Tony’s mother Livia (Vera Farmiga, sporting a fake nose that miraculously doesn’t take away from her bleakly funny performance) is an abusive narcissist who is prone to causing a scene wherever she goes. But “The Many Saints of Newark” is smart enough to point out that Livia isn’t an anomaly in this world — she’s just another borderline-sociopath who has found her place among murderous men. The ultimate tragedy is that we can see the tiniest glimmer of hope for Tony here, but we know it’s a false hope. In the end, he’ll never get away from this violent world. And he’ll send those he claims to love straight to hell. 

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10