The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli Is Up to Something
Does something Sopranos this way come? Let’s review the evidence. The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that he’s working on a movie with The Sopranos creator David Chase. “Yeah, we’re writing a movie together right now for me and Steve Schirripa,” Imperioli confirmed. “It’s a mystery project. I can’t talk about it beyond that.” Schirripa, who starred as Bobby Baccalieri, also co-hosts a Sopranos podcast with Imperioli. Of course, it’s always possible that these three Sopranos alums are reuniting for something that isn’t related to the HBO crime drama. But as hopeful fans have pointed out, the Sopranos-verse has already expanded to cinema with the 2021 release of the prequel film The Many Saints of Newark. Although the origin story wasn’t necessarily a huge hit at the box office, it reported did very well on HBO Max.
Imperioli reprized his role as Christopher Moltisanti in the movie to narrate the opening and closing scenes, and Chase described Imperioli’s cameo to NME as “the Maraschino cherry on top” for the prequel about Dickie Moltisanti and a young Tony Soprano. Chase also later told The Hollywood Reporter that while he is not interested in doing another TV adaptation of The Sopranos, he is open to one more movie. “I have an idea for that that I’d like to do,” Chase said. “But I don’t think they want that.” We’re not quite sure exactly whom that refers to, but we’ll be waiting to see if they end up changing their mind.
There’s a bit of verbal irony in the name The Many Saints of Newark, the title of the prequel to The Sopranos, one of the most groundbreaking, echoed dramas in television history.
Turns out there are actually very few saints in the grim but still bustling pocket of mob-run Jersey circa the late 1960s and ’70s imagined for the screen by Sopranos mastermind David Chase, Sopranos writer Lawrence Konner, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Alan Taylor, director of the film and multiple episodes of the HBO series that inspired it. Practically everyone in this movie has a moral compass that’s gone kablooey or will in the near future. That’s especially true of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), a character who never appeared in the HBO series but, according to this new chapter in the Sopranos saga, had a major influence on its central figure. (The title of the movie also works as double entendre: in Italian, many saints is “molti santi.”)
While this Sopranos prequel functions as a Tony Soprano origin story of sorts — even the movie poster asks, “Who made Tony Soprano?” — its protagonist is actually Dickie, a loyal member of the Soprano crew, semi-present father, and a less than faithful husband who is nevertheless admired by a young Tony, portrayed as a boy by William Ludwig and as a teen by Michael Gandolfini, son of the definitive Tony Soprano, the late, magnificent James Gandolfini. Even Tony’s mother Livia (an appropriately cantankerous Vera Farmiga sporting a prosthetically enhanced nose) looks at Dickie through glasses the color of the pinkest rose.
As the movie progresses, Dickie engages in increasingly heinous behavior — this Sopranos spin-off has lost none of the show’s willingness to display violence at its most brutal — while simultaneously reckoning with his anxiety and guilt. In other words, Dickie’s experience semi-mirrors the psychological journey that a grown-up Tony will embark on decades later, prompted by that famous family of panic-inducing ducks in his backyard swimming pool. With results that range from the predictable to the semi-profound, Dickie’s story also aims to enhance our understanding of the values that Tony emulated, absorbed and acted upon until The Sopranos’ final, controversial cut-to-black.
Theoretically a person could watch The Many Saints of Newark, in theater and on HBO Max Friday, without having seen The Sopranos, but I can’t imagine why anyone would. The basic plot is easy enough to follow, but the ability to notice connections between the two, along with the joy of recognizing the younger versions of familiar characters — the film is remarkable well cast — would be lost on the Bada Bing! deprived. And those are two of the central pleasures this movie provides.
When considered purely on terms that aren’t informed by its predecessor, Many Saints is a much thinner experience. Without six seasons of premium cable TV to add context, it plays out like a reasonable well-executed but not particularly inspired mob movie reminiscent of other mob movies you’ve probably seen before, and with an antihero in Dickie who lacks the depth and surprise that James Gandolfini’s Tony possessed in abundance.
