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Off-key Sopranos

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From left to right: Andrew Davoli, Seth Green, Barry Pepper and Vin Diesel star in New Line Cinema´s drama Knockaround Guys, about a bunch of young, slightly sensitive mobsters. The film opens tomorrow.

Imagine what will happen when Tony Soprano's son grows up.

He'll graduate from committing mindless pranks — such as locking his defenseless preteen cousins in the shed, per Sunday's episode of The Sopranos.

He will surpass the angst and drama of his teenage existence, moving on to 20-something angst instead. He will develop feelings of powerlessness against the men in his family, and he will want to be a bigger bully.

Moviegoers will get a preview of what little A.J. Soprano might feel like in the future when Knockaround Guys opens Friday.

The film, starring Seth Green, Vin Diesel, Barry Pepper, Dennis Hopper and John Malkovich, centers on a crime family. Pepper plays Matty Demaret, the too-sweet-for-organized-crime son of a mobster.

Young Matty's balls of steel got lost somewhere in the gene pool along with his itchy trigger finger. We see this in the beginning when Uncle Teddy Deserve (Malkovich) gives 12-year-old Matty a sitting duck to play with — the guy who allegedly put Matty's daddy, Benny "Chains" Demaret, in prison. But the preteen won't perpetrate.

Fast forward to Matty's 20s. Finding his sensitivity a barrier to success in the family biz, he tries to get a "real" job, but Daddy's legacy precedes him at every interview.

So, Matty decides he has no choice but to join Daddy's business. However, Daddy doesn't trust him, "You brought the sandwiches, what else can you do?" Benny asks Matty half-seriously.

But Uncle Teddy pulls for his nephew and gets him a job transporting money from Spokane to the family's turf in Brooklyn.

As a guy who needs a support system, Matty brings his friends along for the ride on his first big mob assignment. Seth Green plays Johnny Marbles, a loopy cokehead with an honorable streak — as much of an honorable streak as a loopy cokehead can have.

Sexy Andrew Davoli plays ladies' man Chris Scarpa, who uses the family name to get laid and his father's influence to get out of scrapes.

Vin Diesel plays beefy Taylor Reese, a half-Jewish kid who can't get respect from the wise guy progenitors of his friends.

All the kiddies end up in Wibaux, Mont., population 40 (brain cells), chasing after money — but not before botching the job and losing half a mil somewhere in the small town.

The Brooklyn kids figure they'll just take over the town and turn whoever has the cash upside down and shake it out of their pockets, along with their yo-yos and Bazooka bubblegum. But it's not that simple.

Wibaux has its own "crime family" in Sheriff (Tom Noonan), who ends up with the money and whose steel-toed cowboy boots kick Matty's designer-jeans-clad butt. Further happenings in Wibaux force Matty to do some serious soul-searching about his lack of focus in life. We see spawn of some serious mobsters come-of-age right there in Wibaux.

But, no matter how tough the boys act, they're still little kids who shoot guns like they're playing Duck Hunt on old-school Nintendo. They look most at home kickin' back in their Montana motel room making fun of the hunting shows on TV.

Taylor (Diesel) asks why the turkey hunters on TV don't just go out for a Butterball. Kids these days — nobody wants to do organized crime the hard way. As Malkovich whines, "Now everybody's feelings are involved."

Unfortunately, there's no room for feelings or self-esteem in organized crime. We appreciate the look at the issues facing young mobsters, but it's all a little too touchy-feely.

Images of impotence and powerlessness pervade the movie as the boys curse and pout when things don't go their way. The wishy-washy plot is similarly powerless to engage viewers. We keep expecting Dr. Melfi to drop in from The Sopranos to point out to Matty that he's regressing.

There are a few funny scenes, but mostly we don't want to see this softer side of the mob. The movie, like Matty's rap sheet, is mercifully short, at 93 minutes.

To preclude any more of these young mob coming-of-age stories, let's hope the Soprano kid has inherited either Tony's balls or Carmela's good sense.

Reach the reporter at sara.thorson@asu.edu.


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