The Many Saints of Newark
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: October 1, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
17
Negative:
3
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 29, 2021
It’s a sharply honed, darkly funny, ultra-violent and wildly entertaining late 1960s period piece about the making of future made man Tony Soprano, the early criminal escapades of many key characters from the HBO series — and the blood oaths and ruthless betrayals that would set the checkered table for virtually everything that would happen to the Sopranos, their extended family and their associates some three decades later. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 21, 2021
Saints can't be what Sopranos was — without the time or the ones who've been lost to tell it, fuggedaboutit. But for a hundred-something minutes, it feels close enough to coming home again. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyOct 1, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark is both instantly recognisable and somehow unplaceable. It’s fierce and brilliant, too – a work that both expands on and complicates the cultural legacy of The Sopranos. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramSep 21, 2021
Violent, gripping, darkly funny and deeply human… everything, in other words, you’d expect from a Sopranos story. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 21, 2021
Anyone who’s ever wondered who and what made Tony the way he was will be richly rewarded by Alan Taylor’s trip back in time. Read full review
80
EmpirePhil de SemlyenSep 21, 2021
A busier proposition than its HBO forefather, this sets up more than it can pay off. But it does manage to balance fan-service with plenty of rich, original, complex material. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 21, 2021
It’s a sharp, lively, and engrossing movie, one that provides a fascinating running commentary on how the world of “The Sopranos” came into being. Yet we can’t help but notice the difference in tone. Read full review
76
CNETRichard TrenholmOct 8, 2021
Willful questioning of the very concept of endings makes this Sopranos film feel like a pilot episode of a new series. Read full review
75
Vanity FairRichard LawsonOct 9, 2021
The film has a sneaky momentum. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 4, 2021
If nothing else, The Many Saints of Newark recaptures the feel and aesthetic of David Chase’s The Sopranos, the TV series that was frequently cited as the best television had to offer during the eight years when it was on (and off) the air. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 30, 2021
As with the series, the best scenes here remain slightly off-plot yet wholly on-target and devoted to the characters as well as matters of corrupted, corrosive character. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeDon AucoinSep 29, 2021
As a Goodfellas-ish crime drama that vividly evokes time and place, Saints is rendered with enough bare-knuckled verve, unpredictability, and darkly glinting wit to make it work. Read full review
75
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 27, 2021
When you make a film out of the greatest TV show of all time, there’s bound to be a hint of disappointment. What you’re getting here is a very enjoyable mob movie that can be appreciated by anybody, but will undoubtedly be preferred by Sopranos fans. The Godfather IV it ain’t. Read full review
75
The Film StageEli FriedbergSep 27, 2021
Many Saints comes bursting out of the proverbial shed with so many new ideas that one gets the sense it easily could—perhaps should—have been a new season of television. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 21, 2021
If you know the world of “The Many Saints of Newark” — maybe you’re Italian American from the East Coast, and have at least a dim memory of the late 1960s — this prequel to “The Sopranos” TV series is both accurate and oddly hilarious. Read full review
75
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonSep 21, 2021
Sopranos superfans will find plenty to love about the prequel film. Read full review
75
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaSep 21, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark is smart enough to point out that Livia isn't an anomaly in this world — she's just another borderline-sociopath who has found her place among murderous men. Read full review
70
PolygonNoel MurrayOct 1, 2021
It’s a polished, entertaining film, but a lot of its meaning derives from how much the audience cares about a handful of TV characters they may or may not already know. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensSep 30, 2021
Once you can get past this movie’s reliance on the audience bringing in a prior store of knowledge about, and queasy affection for, its troubled characters, The Many Saints of Newark is a worthy companion to the series and a fascinating watch in itself. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 28, 2021
Chase has delivered something that walks the tightrope between social melodrama and fan service, and that sometimes teeters on the edge of falling. But he has also given us the foundation for the moment when a man from New Jersey will wake up one morning and get himself a gun. Read full review
70
IGNLaura SirikulSep 27, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark is a solid and fan-friendly prequel to the classic HBO series, even if it does try to add too much to the Sopranos Universe. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 27, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark isn’t The Sopranos. But both literally and figuratively, it’s a start. Read full review
70
CNNBrian LowrySep 21, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark turns out to be a credible and rewarding film. But with a bit more seasoning and time in the oven, like its HBO predecessor, it actually might have risen into a truly sensational TV show. Read full review
67
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 30, 2021
Too conventional by half, the prequel betrays the boldness of the original show, though it stirs up good memories. Sopranos complete-ists, who have exhausted analyzing the 86 episodes, may want to pay it homage via this relic, like a bonus extra on the series’ box-set. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleBeth SullivanSep 29, 2021
Although The Many Saints of Newark offers an alluring glimpse into Tony Soprano’s birth under a bad sign, it never shows the blue moon in the mobster’s eyes. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 21, 2021
Of course, nobody does a better job of inhabiting their character’s future shell than Michael Gandolfini, whose performance as juvenile delinquent Tony Soprano is such a lived-in riff on his father’s most famous role that it completely transcends the gimmicky task at hand. Read full review
65
ABC NewsPeter TraversOct 1, 2021
This big-screen prequel to ‘The Sopranos,’ with a touching Michael Gandolfini playing the teen version of the role created by his late father, is good, but not good enough to score as a great mob epic in its own right. Read full review
63
The Associated PressMark KennedySep 29, 2021
One problem here is time, something the film obviously plays with. The Many Saints of Newark arrives 14 years after The Sopranos ended and that may be too long for anyone but the most ardent fan to keep up. The brain strains trying to connect new faces with old ones. Read full review
60
The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 1, 2021
A number of the observations about the strictures of gangland life that The Many Saints of Newark bumps up against are compelling, but the film is a victim of its own compression, telling a season’s worth of stories in two hours. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Jen ChaneySep 30, 2021
In its subtext, this movie tells us that nothing is as good as you might hope. That’s true of the era that Tony would later, wrongly, glorify. And it’s true of a movie that is fascinating to study and consider, but not nearly as good as the television series that made us wish for this movie to exist. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 27, 2021
There’s enough drama to hold the film together for the uninitiated, although many fleetingly introduced characters suggest that – for all David Chase’s protests against streaming – we’re watching a pilot rather than a truly standalone project. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 25, 2021
It’s undeniably entertaining stuff, but this choppy collage-style portrait of the formative figures in the life of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) is better suited to the needs of existing fans rather than those of Sopranos neophytes. Read full review
60
Time OutOlly RichardsSep 21, 2021
For those who’ve never seen The Sopranos, or don’t remember it vividly, this may leave you feeling a little adrift. There is a dense, potentially very rich story here, but a two-hour movie gives it too little space to unfold. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 21, 2021
The late-’60s and early-’70s production and costume design, by Bob Shaw and Amy Westcott, respectively, are rooted firmly in an evocative sense of time and place, enhanced by a soundtrack of pinpoint needle drops. But The Many Saints of Newark is more of a diverting footnote than an invaluable extension of the show’s colossal legacy. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 21, 2021
Michael Gandolfini is goosebump-inducing as the young Tony Soprano, amid race riots and antagonism towards rival African American gangs. Read full review
50
Little White LiesHannah StrongOct 4, 2021
With a forgettable, borderline generic, plot and direction lacking flair and artistry, it’s not a disaster, it’s just a disappointment. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesLorraine AliSep 30, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark might have played better as a limited series rather than a truncated self-contained production, with the potential for a deeper story to unfold over several impending episodes. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 23, 2021
The “origin story” that is the film’s chief appeal takes a back seat to “series pilot” requirements. The film’s biggest asset becomes a handicap. “Saints” never feels thorough, thought-through or complete. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 21, 2021
The juxtapositions between backroom politicking, intimate family drama, and the occasional lurches into action often give the impression of a TV season’s worth of content crammed into two hours. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 21, 2021
Chase, who co-wrote the script with an alum of his writers’ room, Lawrence Konner, flattens the world of The Sopranos into a generic, vaguely Scorsesian crime epic. At times, the film suggests the shapelessness of a biopic, as though it were beholden to some historical record of facts and figures. Read full review
47
Paste MagazineJacob OllerOct 1, 2021
While Chase, Taylor and Konner figure out a way to give us a half-assed rundown of the gangster rise-and-fall we saw again and again in the series, they couldn’t figure out how to make that into any kind of satisfying film—let alone one worth its references to the gangster canon and let alone one that has anything at all to say about the race relations in Newark during its setting. Read full review
42
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 30, 2021
The result is an indecisive and shapeless drama that never seems confident in the characters or situations it has created. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 4, 2021
Over six seasons The Sopranos at least compensated for its reductive aesthetic with complex patterns of narrative information. The Many Saints of Newark, by contrast, reduces characters of potentially mythic power to a handful of defining traits and pins them to a diorama-like backdrop of historical readymades. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 30, 2021
In the end, the best thing about “The Many Saints of Newark” is that it makes you think about “The Sopranos,” but that’s also the worst thing about it. Read full review
40
TheWrapDan CallahanSep 21, 2021
The new characters are all one-dimensional, and we learn nothing new about the old characters from the series. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyOct 1, 2021
The movie’s flabbiness, its unfocused flopping from scene to scene, its disinclination to provide any individual scene with any dimension beyond its immediate impact, practically vitiates the entire theme of Dickie’s ostensible mentorship of Tony Soprano. Read full review
37
Washington PostInkoo KangSep 29, 2021
Alternately claustrophobic and epic compositions can’t make up for the myriad story lines (including one frustrating red herring) and pacing issues that periodically lose sight of the stakes at hand. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalDorothy RabinowitzSep 30, 2021
Even the pleasurable sight of Michael Gandolfini —son of the late James Gandolfini, who played Tony in that series—as young Tony was never going to make up for the complete absence, in this film, of anything remotely reflective of the tone and color of “The Sopranos.”’ Or of anything resembling a credible character or plot line. Read full review
More From This Movie

60 Critic Reviews

4.9 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 72 The Sheep Detectives
5 68 Crime 101
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL