The Many Saints of Newark: Far from celestial

The Many Saints of Newark (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, pervasive profanity, sexual content and nudity

Available via: HBO Max and movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

I’ve never before seen a bait-and-switch movie.

 

Fans approaching this film anticipating the origin and molding of Tony Soprano — a quite reasonable expectation, given the way The Many Saints of Newark has been marketed — are certain to be disappointed.

 

When his father returns home after a four-year prison stretch, teenage Tony
(Michael Gandolfini, left) — uncertain what to say or do — must be encouraged by
his "uncle" Dickie (Alessandro Nivola) to go with his heart.

This is, instead, a years-long study of a slowly building turf war between New Jersey’s Italian Mafiosi — which, yes, includes numerous individuals who will, in time, become the running characters on the six-season HBO series — and competitors spawned by the rising Black power movement. The young Tony Soprano is, at best, a very minor character in these events … and, more crucially, the David Chase/Lawrence Konner script gives absolutely no indication of what will trigger the kid’s eventual rise to power.

I’ll take that a step further: As clumsily played by Michael Gandolfini — the late James Gandolfini’s son, in a bit of stunt casting that bespeaks sentimentality rather than common sense — there’s no way this pasty, sullen, self-centered mope ever could become the adult Tony Soprano that we loved and loathed. Fuhgeddaboudit.

 

What we’re left with, instead, is a mildly absorbing, Godfather-esque crime saga centered on the complex private and professional relationships between the Soprano and Moltisanti families. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) is the Al Pacino-esque central character who, during his more rational moments, attempts to maintain unity while tending to his end of the “family business.”

 

Sadly, Dickie — very well played by Nivola — is prone to explosive bursts of temper, with dire results.

 

This saga is occasionally narrated — in a cheeky bit of storytelling — by Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti, speaking from beyond the grave. (We recall, from the series, that Tony Soprano ultimately killed him.) Christopher therefore establishes the groundwork for a chronicle that begins before he was born.

 

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious that writers Chase and Konner have laid out far more than this single two-hour film can resolve, with any degree of satisfaction. Too many sidebar events get short shrift, or no shrift at all; this overly ambitious narrative screams for the long-form episodic treatment enjoyed by the HBO series.

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that the Italians share the stage with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a childhood friend of Dickie’s who now — on his behalf — oversees the numbers racket in the Central Ward, Newark’s predominantly Black neighborhood. Odom’s performance is thoughtful and multi-layered; Harold is intelligent, ambitious and angered by the circumstance of skin color that thwarts a desire for his own piece of the action.

 

Frankly, Harold deserves his own separate movie.

The Place Beyond the Pines: Can't see the forest for the trees

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, violence, brief sexuality and teen drug and alcohol use
By Derrick Bang

What a yawn.

And an unpleasant, bewildering yawn, at that.

Although she should know better, Romina (Eva Mendes) rekindles what couldn't have
been more than a fleeting relationship with Luke (Ryan Gosling) in the first place.
Letting him back into her life makes him believe that he has family obligations, which
in turn prompts a rather desperate means of earning some cash. It's hard to view
this relationship as credible, a problem that infects most of the entire film.

No doubt inspired by Crash, Babel and similar films with interwoven plotlines, director/co-scripter Derek Cianfrance seems to have tried for the same with The Place Beyond the Pines. Unfortunately, he forgot a few key ingredients: engaging characters, credible behavior and a moral center to what rapidly devolves into a pointless muddle.

Ultimately, the gimmick is all that remains: one story that leads to a second, which in turn prompts a third that hearkens back to the first. By itself, that’s a rather slim thread on which to hang an interminable 140-minute film. That’s a lot of time to spend with dull, dreary characters we neither like nor understand.

Worse yet, Cianfrance’s insufferably ponderous style — long, lingering close-ups, great stretches of silence as characters contemplate The Meaning Of It All — screams faux relevance in every frame. One cannot be “deep” simply by wishing it so; the world is littered with the detritus of bad poets who’ve learned that lesson.

Actually, many of them never did learn, much to everybody else’s regret. And the same can be said of pompous filmmakers.

The result in this case is bewildering, given that Cianfrance’s previous effort, the deeply intimate Blue Valentine, delivered the achingly tragic emotional arc that eludes this new film at every turn. Maybe Blue Valentine’s success derives from Cianfrance’s greater comfort with just two central characters; the broader tapestry attempted with The Place Beyond the Pines — terrible title, by the way — seems beyond him.

Cianfrance shares scripting credit with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, and they collectively view human nature the way we might be observed by visitors from Alpha Centauri. Most of the events and subsequent psychological fallout here ring false: as contrived as some of the tin-eared dialogue and angst-y recriminations.