“Hollywood” steps off a boat from Italy with a trophy wife maybe a third his age who catches younger Dickie’s eye, but one doesn’t make too much of it because one can’t really.
One can say that both Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher’s father, and “ Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti are guys with one if not more screws loose brash, violent, impulsive men. Is psychopathy hereditary? One can’t really say. Or at least you know it takes place in a world where “whys” can be provisional, fleeting, flaky, in part because it’s a world of psychopaths, not to put too fine a point on it. If you do know the series, you do know why. This arguably teases the notion that here, you will find out why. “He choked me to death,” he says flatly about a key character from the series. One voice begins to take over: that of Christopher Moltisanti ( Michael Imperioli, of the series, contributes his voice), who discusses his life and its end. The movie opens with an evocative crane shot, that turns into a dolly shot, of a cemetery the voices of the dead on a rainy afternoon crowd the soundtrack. What we get in the movie, directed by Alan Taylor from a script by “Sopranos” capo David Chase and Lawrence Konner, is two hours of reach exceeding grasp, a jumble of moments that often only toggle between the exasperating and repellent.
