All that build up ....all the time they had to fine tune this film and make it a masterpiece. What the hell happened ?
Was it the terrible cheap cgi backgrounds ,cigarette smoke and fire ?
Was it the bad acting?
Was the writing ?
Was it the plot ?
Or was it all of the above?
I was expecting a riveting story about a serious gangster battling a drug problem taking his nephew under his wing and showing him the ropes and schooling him on how the mob life really is. Giving him tips on how to be a real leader of men and showing him tricks of the trade and how to outsmart his rivals in the dark underworld of the mob in the race torn streets of newark.
What did we get: a guy with the personality of a potato doing a jimmy the gent impression kills his own dad then starts sleeping with his stepmom, begins to school his nephew in the art of cheek pulling and head rubbing and calling him a gagootz and sealing it with a pinky promise. After a few years of this he gives tony some speakers he's stolen then completely cuts him off after taking advice from a guy in prison who he hardly knows .....all the while has a falling out with a man who used to work for him because this man killed one of his guys trying to get his own gang going and in the end he's taken out for laughing at a throwback gag that was added to story to please the sopranos fans that was honestly funnier in the tv show....im being serious....
In the tv series dickie moltisanti was referred to as a straight up OG but he was also known for being a degenerate junkie but in this film he is neither. They make out at the end that he's known for being a junkie because he had antidepressants/antipsychotics in his pockets when they found him dead. Tony had asked dickie to get the drugs to give to livia to stop her being all mean and salty but he never made it so now people assume the pills were his ....oh please.. the guy was supposed to be a gangster, just because they found him with drugs on him didn't make him a junkie,he could have been selling them for all they knew. Its not mentioned once in any of this that anyone thinks he is a junkie or has an addictive personality to anything . I can't even remember him drinking in this tbh. But in the tv series its mentioned a few times that he was a drinker and degenerate drug user and had addiction problems. They really hit a low trying to rewrite him as some sort misunderstood loveable rogue. I was hoping to see a real mean and ruthless mobster unhinged by his drug abuse but he just comes across as a normal wise guy who doesn't really do anything.
I hated the nods to the tv show, i'm not talking about the story but the little nods like quotes and such ...uncle june in this is just embarrassing and he's made out to be stupid and a bit thick.they even have him quoting famous quotes from the tv series thinking they are doing the fans justice but it just came across as stupid. A one off quote as a nod, yeah, but pretty much all that came out of this guys mouth was lines from the tv show. It was like something out of a terrible comedy sketch. Also in the series uncle june was only the way he was due to being old and eventually getting alzheimer's. It was said in the tv show he was a man to be feared in his day and was sharp as an arrow in this he's a bumbling idiot who nobody respects. Also in this he reminds me more of eddie hitler from the tv show "bottom" more the uncle junior
the nattration at the beginning is cheesy and not needed. Why is chris moltisanti narrating his dad's story? Is it because he's dead he now knows everything ?shouldn't it be dickie narrating his life story now he's dead ? Or is this movie just chris's version of his dad's story who makes his dad out to be a great guy who was misunderstood and tony out to be a complete monster ?
There's really no need for him to be in this other than they can attach michael imperioli's name to the film. All he does as a narrator is complain how tony is going to choke him to death later on and how tony only gave his widow his pocket change and then called him soft for moving to the the burbs. The more i think about it now it really does just seem we are being told a story by a bitter ghost whos just making it up as he goes along , i mean, the film starts off in a graveyard showing his grave so this might be the case. Hopefully it is and the real sopranos movie will come out soon and this will have been a red herring or something.
We should have had paulie (Tony Sirico )as narrator if they insisted on having one. Would have been far more entertaining listening to him talk about his Ma and prostate problems than most of the crummy dialogue in this.
Over all the movie is pretty bad, it's boring, nothing really eventful happens that we haven't seen before a million times ,ray liotta plays ray liotta, then plays a calm ray liotta in prison. The guy who plays sil does a great impression of a guy with no acting skills pretending to be sil. The only saving grace in the film were the actual sopranos family. Jon Bernthal who plays johnny boy absolutely nails it. You really do feel uneasy when he's on screen and he actually came across as a believable gangster with a temper. Vera Farmiga is also great in this film and did an amazing job playing livia. And i gotta give Michael Gandolfini his due i think he did a great job playing his dad he does look out of place in some scenes but really shined in this movie the the phone box part where he lost his temper you can definitely see his dads eyes in that scene . I did think he was completely underused but so were most of the characters i wanted to see.
Hardcore soprano fans might wanna give this a miss, its over hyped and the magic that's in the original tv show isn't here , the fanservice they shove into it feels forced and not funny or clever. There's a part where baby chris cries whenever he goes near young tony and it would have been quite clever if it would have been kept short, could have seen if it was noticed by viewers, kinda a is it isnt it moment but it goes on for way to long and young tony even states it that he cries EVERYTIME he goes near him then some random old women who we never see again pipes up and explains it could be because babies remember stuff from the spiritual world before they are born so i guess baby chris saw tony killing him 30 odd years into the future before he was born.and was scared of him ???....riggggght.
The subtle nods in the tv show that made you think outside the box or that get fans talking, taking guesses on what it might mean are not here, you are spoon fed them instead like you are slow and wouldn't get them
Quite disappointing after waiting all them years but hollywood is trying to relate to everybody instead of a movies intended audience. This could have been an amazing film if they stuck strictly to story and had time to thrash it all out properly but just like the rest of the films they brought out these last few years they have to cram some civil rights message into it or political statement. The days of making films for entertainment purposes seem to be over. It's either that or david chase has lost his touch after years of people praising him and he believes no matter what he puts on screen it will be loved..... I honestly wish they never bothered now, some things should just be left alone. The sopranos was one of them.
Was it the terrible cheap cgi backgrounds ,cigarette smoke and fire ?
Was it the bad acting?
Was the writing ?
Was it the plot ?
Or was it all of the above?
I was expecting a riveting story about a serious gangster battling a drug problem taking his nephew under his wing and showing him the ropes and schooling him on how the mob life really is. Giving him tips on how to be a real leader of men and showing him tricks of the trade and how to outsmart his rivals in the dark underworld of the mob in the race torn streets of newark.
What did we get: a guy with the personality of a potato doing a jimmy the gent impression kills his own dad then starts sleeping with his stepmom, begins to school his nephew in the art of cheek pulling and head rubbing and calling him a gagootz and sealing it with a pinky promise. After a few years of this he gives tony some speakers he's stolen then completely cuts him off after taking advice from a guy in prison who he hardly knows .....all the while has a falling out with a man who used to work for him because this man killed one of his guys trying to get his own gang going and in the end he's taken out for laughing at a throwback gag that was added to story to please the sopranos fans that was honestly funnier in the tv show....im being serious....
In the tv series dickie moltisanti was referred to as a straight up OG but he was also known for being a degenerate junkie but in this film he is neither. They make out at the end that he's known for being a junkie because he had antidepressants/antipsychotics in his pockets when they found him dead. Tony had asked dickie to get the drugs to give to livia to stop her being all mean and salty but he never made it so now people assume the pills were his ....oh please.. the guy was supposed to be a gangster, just because they found him with drugs on him didn't make him a junkie,he could have been selling them for all they knew. Its not mentioned once in any of this that anyone thinks he is a junkie or has an addictive personality to anything . I can't even remember him drinking in this tbh. But in the tv series its mentioned a few times that he was a drinker and degenerate drug user and had addiction problems. They really hit a low trying to rewrite him as some sort misunderstood loveable rogue. I was hoping to see a real mean and ruthless mobster unhinged by his drug abuse but he just comes across as a normal wise guy who doesn't really do anything.
I hated the nods to the tv show, i'm not talking about the story but the little nods like quotes and such ...uncle june in this is just embarrassing and he's made out to be stupid and a bit thick.they even have him quoting famous quotes from the tv series thinking they are doing the fans justice but it just came across as stupid. A one off quote as a nod, yeah, but pretty much all that came out of this guys mouth was lines from the tv show. It was like something out of a terrible comedy sketch. Also in the series uncle june was only the way he was due to being old and eventually getting alzheimer's. It was said in the tv show he was a man to be feared in his day and was sharp as an arrow in this he's a bumbling idiot who nobody respects. Also in this he reminds me more of eddie hitler from the tv show "bottom" more the uncle junior
the nattration at the beginning is cheesy and not needed. Why is chris moltisanti narrating his dad's story? Is it because he's dead he now knows everything ?shouldn't it be dickie narrating his life story now he's dead ? Or is this movie just chris's version of his dad's story who makes his dad out to be a great guy who was misunderstood and tony out to be a complete monster ?
There's really no need for him to be in this other than they can attach michael imperioli's name to the film. All he does as a narrator is complain how tony is going to choke him to death later on and how tony only gave his widow his pocket change and then called him soft for moving to the the burbs. The more i think about it now it really does just seem we are being told a story by a bitter ghost whos just making it up as he goes along , i mean, the film starts off in a graveyard showing his grave so this might be the case. Hopefully it is and the real sopranos movie will come out soon and this will have been a red herring or something.
We should have had paulie (Tony Sirico )as narrator if they insisted on having one. Would have been far more entertaining listening to him talk about his Ma and prostate problems than most of the crummy dialogue in this.
Over all the movie is pretty bad, it's boring, nothing really eventful happens that we haven't seen before a million times ,ray liotta plays ray liotta, then plays a calm ray liotta in prison. The guy who plays sil does a great impression of a guy with no acting skills pretending to be sil. The only saving grace in the film were the actual sopranos family. Jon Bernthal who plays johnny boy absolutely nails it. You really do feel uneasy when he's on screen and he actually came across as a believable gangster with a temper. Vera Farmiga is also great in this film and did an amazing job playing livia. And i gotta give Michael Gandolfini his due i think he did a great job playing his dad he does look out of place in some scenes but really shined in this movie the the phone box part where he lost his temper you can definitely see his dads eyes in that scene . I did think he was completely underused but so were most of the characters i wanted to see.
Hardcore soprano fans might wanna give this a miss, its over hyped and the magic that's in the original tv show isn't here , the fanservice they shove into it feels forced and not funny or clever. There's a part where baby chris cries whenever he goes near young tony and it would have been quite clever if it would have been kept short, could have seen if it was noticed by viewers, kinda a is it isnt it moment but it goes on for way to long and young tony even states it that he cries EVERYTIME he goes near him then some random old women who we never see again pipes up and explains it could be because babies remember stuff from the spiritual world before they are born so i guess baby chris saw tony killing him 30 odd years into the future before he was born.and was scared of him ???....riggggght.
The subtle nods in the tv show that made you think outside the box or that get fans talking, taking guesses on what it might mean are not here, you are spoon fed them instead like you are slow and wouldn't get them
Quite disappointing after waiting all them years but hollywood is trying to relate to everybody instead of a movies intended audience. This could have been an amazing film if they stuck strictly to story and had time to thrash it all out properly but just like the rest of the films they brought out these last few years they have to cram some civil rights message into it or political statement. The days of making films for entertainment purposes seem to be over. It's either that or david chase has lost his touch after years of people praising him and he believes no matter what he puts on screen it will be loved..... I honestly wish they never bothered now, some things should just be left alone. The sopranos was one of them.