Tony Soprano, the mob boss in “The Sopranos,” was many things: husband, father, animal lover, woman killer, sociopathic capitalist, pop culture sensation. Americans like their villains on the soft side, and Tony is famous for suffering from internal turmoil, which manifests itself in panic attacks, with blood on his hands. A mobster in therapy – with a sexy psychologist, no less – generated a ton of narrative tension, as did his gangs and extended families. All in all, Tony was a perfect distillation of two great American passions: self-improvement and the unpunished escape from murder.
Created by David Chase, “The Sopranos” faded to an enigmatic black in 2007, though it remains, including on HBO, its original home for six seasons. As a rule, we use the present tense when writing about fiction: characters exist in the eternal now, or that's the idea. But the death of James Gandolfini, who played Tony, complicates that because he and the show were interchangeable. With his lucid, quicksilver expressiveness and awkward and powerfully menacing physicality, Gandolfini concretized Tony's inner struggle, filling a cartoon potential with soul and, by extension, adding depth to the spectacle. It's because of his absence that I think of his main character in the past.
It's also the reason why the spinoff movie “The Many Saints of Newark,” a busy, unnecessary, and disappointingly common origin story, doesn't work. The film certainly has pedigree. It was written by Chase with Lawrence Konner, who wrote a few episodes of “The Sopranos” and directed by Alan Taylor, another veteran of the series. Jumping between time periods, he tracks the sentimental (moral and emotional) upbringing of young Tony, who in 1967 is an 11-year-old brat played by William Ludwig. After many introductions and plot developments, the story jumps to Tony at age 16, now played by Gandolfini's son Michael, who bears a striking resemblance to his father.
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