Review: James Gandolfini's son as young Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark
The Many Saints of Newark
★★★★☆
Arguably the greatest TV drama series of all time, The Sopranos gets a belated origins tale in the shape of The Many Saints of Newark (16s), in which the young Tony Soprano is played as a child by William Ludwig and as a teenager by Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who so memorably played the original Tony Soprano. Surprisingly, perhaps, the film is less concerned with young Tony himself than it is with the adults who shaped him, which include his constantly warring mother Livia (Vera Farmiga) and father Johnny Boy (Jon Bernthal), but especially his ‘uncle’, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the mobster who takes Tony under his wing. It’s no wonder, then, that the adult Tony was obliged to seek psychiatric help: where a conventional crime thriller might evolve as a battle for an impressionable young man’s soul, Tony’s mentor, Dickie, is only a little less brutal than his father, Johnny Boy, in part because Dickie’s own father, ‘Hollywood Dick’ Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), is himself an old-school mobster steeped in violence.
