Movie Review: The Many Saints of Newark

 

Michael's Movie Grade: D-

A rather boring and bland movie based off the Sopranos TV series. 

The problem with this movie is that it tries to do too much in only two hours. The television roots are clearly evident as this would have clearly worked better as a series than a single film. The film tells multiple stories and follows too many characters and the result is that I simply didn't care about anything. Neither the stories nor the characters every had a chance to stand on their own. Because of this the film manages to feel really rushed, yet drag on at the same time. Most of the time the characters here, don't act like real believable people but rather simple stereotypes with little to no personality outside of that. If a movie uses famous characters from somewhere else and fails to make them interesting, they are still uninteresting in that movie despite being interesting elsewhere. The fact that they come from a TV series, does not correct this problem as if the characters aren't interesting in this film, it is still hard to care about them. The only story that kind of works is the one following the young Tony Soprano. Yet this story arc receives much too little screen time and therefore not only feels rushed but feels trapped in this jumbled mess of a movie. I kept waiting for this movie to get back to that storyline as I was bored by the other scenes and then when it came back it was so tantalizingly brief that I couldn't feel anything but disappointment. As well as trying to tell too many stories, this film tries to be a social commentary on racism. Unfortunately while well intentioned this feels forced, heavy handed and just another thing to be clumsily juggled by this movie. You are not going to get any new insight out of what you see here and I doubt it will spark any interesting discussion about racism. Despite rushing many story points this movie moves at a surprisingly slow pace and yet this pace does not add anything to the atmosphere or emotion of this story. Because of this the film drags on for what seems like much longer than two hours. 

This movie is just a disappointment on all levels and the only good things about it are brushed to the sidelines and not given enough time to work as well as they should.