Tony Soprano may or may not have been offed in the last episode of the storied mob series “The Sopranos,” but actor James Gandolfini has, sadly, left us. As the crime boss he is and was the show; it would be hard, if not impossible, to have a sequel or a revival without him. With that in mind, what series creator and writer David Chase and director Alan Taylor have done here is craft a prequel with Gandolfini’s son, Michael, in the role of the young Tony Soprano.
If “The Many Saints of Newark” were a Marvel Universe chapter, it would be tagged as an origin story. Thankfully that’s not the case, and Chase’s deep sense of place and roots and attention to historical detail, as well as a battery of brilliant performances, make “Saints” a winning flashback. We begin in the 1960s in the Italian North Ward of Newark, where racial tensions with the neighboring Black working class of the Central Ward are at an all-time high. The big boss of the moment is a colorful yet fading caricature by the name of “Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), just back from the old country with a beautiful young bride (Michela De Rossi, casting shades of Penelope Cruz). As with the HBO show, small happenings have wide and traumatic repercussions. Dick’s take-charge son, Dickie (a dangerously charismatic Alessandro Nivola), covets his old man’s wife, who becomes his mistress and the spur of many bloody actions – she’s Helen of Newark.
For a concept that’s taken almost 50 years to land on the big screen after a swirl of iterations with big names including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pierce Brosnan attached, “Cry Macho” is likely to register as a disappointment for most. The key to the depth of that letdown is the degree of anticipation you arrive with: This is a Clint Eastwood film, and while the actor has wowed from behind the lens (“Unforgiven,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Invictus,” to name a few) some of his more recent efforts such as “Jersey Boys” (2014) and “The 15:17 to Paris” (2018) have been weak-kneed by compare.
The film, a neo-western by definition (think “Hell or High Water” or “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”) has a washed-up rodeo star (Eastwood) employed under duress by a Texas ranch owner (Dwight Yoakam) to retrieve his 13-year-old son (Eduardo Minett) from his allegedly abusive, freewheeling mother (Fernanda Urrejola) across the border in Mexico City. It’s a curious setup as Eastwood, now a grandfatherly 91 and a long way from his “Dirty Harry” salad days, is not really the type one might enlist for a mission in which muscle and sinew might be required. But Clint’s Mike Milo is indebted to Yoakam’s rancher for carrying him financially since he broke his back riding a bronc back in the day. Once across the border it’s easy enough to locate mom and the son, Rafa, who dabbles in cockfighting and skirting the law. He also bears troubling welts on his back.
The “Macho” of the title is in fact Rafa’s prize rooster, which may get more screen time than any of his human counterparts – and yes, Clint does make a joke about a man calling his cock “Macho.” The script is littered with several such amiable groaners. Much of the character motivation early on feels disjointed, if not arbitrary, despite being penned by Nick Schenk from the 1975 N. Richard Nash novel), who’s notched solid collaborations with Eastwood in the past (“Gran Torino” and “The Mule”). The film gets about halfway in before Mike and Rafa, holed up in a dusty Mexican village, start to bond in a genuine sense. Mike can’t speak a lick of Spanish, and the police and mom’s goons are searching for the pair. During the lay low, Mike becomes something of the village’s Dr. Dolittle: People bring their ailing pets to him, and he and Rafa make a few pesos breaking wild horses. There’s also a spark of romance with the compassionate cantina owner (Natalia Traven, delivering the best performance in the film) giving them aid and cover. The warring by Rafa’s parents over property and power – a thinly drawn catalyst – just distracts. The ending doesn’t wrap it all up to any satisfactory degree, but there remains those affecting human moments in that remote, dusty Eden.
Film critic turned screenwriter turned director Paul Schrader has long been busy at the task of plumbing the tumult of men at war with themselves and the rest of the world. Take Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” (Schrader penned this 1976 Martin Scorsese classic) or Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988, another Scorsese collaboration), let alone Schrader’s last critically hailed directorial effort. “First Reformed” (2018), in which Ethan Hawke plays a priest struggling with his faith, sobriety and place in the world. “The Card Counter” is more of the same, and probably most akin to the filmmaker’s unheralded 1992 effort, “Light Sleeper.” The big ante here is the casting of Oscar Isaac (“Ex Machina,”“Inside Llewyn Davis”) as a troubled gambler who goes by the curious pseudonym of William Tell, and Tiffany Haddish as La Linda, something of a muse of the championship poker circuit who matches players with silent backers interested in a cut of the action (50 percent, to be exact).
That’s the deal, but what’s going on under those cards is something more nuanced and darker. We learn early on that Tell has spent almost 10 years in prison. Just what for isn’t readily clear, but we know he used that time to garner the skills of the film’s title. Out of lockup, Tell works casinos methodically, moving about regularly and being careful to take modest winnings and remain under the radar – until he runs into La Linda, who recognizes his talent for what it is. It’s also at one of these random East Coast casinos that Tell wanders into a police and security convention where a lecture is being given by one Maj. John Gordo (Dafoe) on the latest in security technology. It’s there too that a young man named Cirk (Kirk with a “C,” played by Tye Sheridan, best known for his gamer in “Ready Player One”) approaches Tell, slipping him a piece of paper and telling him he knows who he is and that they need to talk. Not to give too much away, but it turns out Cirk’s father, Gordo and Tell were torturers (er, experts in enhanced interrogation techniques) at Abu Ghraib. Gordo, a private contractor who led the operation, could not be prosecuted for crimes on foreign soil; Tell and Cirk’s dad, enlisted men captured posing with the tortured on camera, were not so lucky.
Like the aforementioned Schrader masterworks, “Card Counter” ultimately becomes about redemption, atonement and a sense of justice that’s not congruent with what laws and courts would impose – something Schrader made so indelible with “Taxi Driver.” “Counter” is also loaded with metaphors and a foreboding aural moodiness by Robert Levon Been that becomes the haunting externalization of Tell’s inner turmoil. (Been is frontman for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; his late father, Michael, lead singer of The Call, scored “Light Sleeper.”) Isaac, with his long face, brings an intense heaviness to the part. His Tell is a loner, a man in between who’s not interested in saving himself but in righting the wrongs of the past. La Linda, Cirk and Gordo give him those opportunities in different ways, some willingly, some not. Tell takes Cirk under his wing for that East Coast tour staked by La Linda, who drops in from time to time to check on her “horse.” There’s a deep, instant chemistry between La Linda and Tell, one Schrader smartly pulls back on, turning it into a slow burn with palpable yen and connections that go places in the other’s soul that haven’t been stirred in years. The relationship with Cirk, while effective, often feels like too much of a plot point insert for Tell’s subsequent actions. It’s a minor flaw in an otherwise riveting character study, a retooling of Schrader’s seminal motif made wholly new again.
For What it's Worth 