The Many Saints of Newark (2021) review

Big screen prequel to David Chase's wildly successful The Sopranos (which I personally consider one of the greatest TV shows of all time) centers primarily on the nefarious activities of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) - father of Christopher (Michael Imperioli) - as he kills his own pop (Ray Liotta), starts an affair with his step-mother Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi) and "mentors" a very young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini, playing his father) all during the Newark riots of 1967.  The first hour shows some promise: there's a welcome spiritual element (Christopher narrates from the great beyond) to preempt the incoming carnage as well as an Oedipal component that's quite unique and some commentary on race relations in America (echoing the George Floyd protests of 2020), before falling totally apart in the second half where it rushes through its plot lines - as one critic wrote, it's never convincing how Dickie managed to "transform" Tony into a sociopathic warlord since the young Tony doesn't get a lot of screen time.  There's plenty of (unwelcome) fan service - a teenage Artie (Robert Vincent Montano) and Carmela (Lauren DiMario) pop up for a few seconds - as well as some less-than-flattering "imitations" of many of the shows regular characters (Big Pussy, Paulie, Silvio, etc.).  The last shot made me laugh ... which is the last thing it needed.