I had a comment typed up yesterday but deleted it somehow before I could send it.
So, I will attempt a second time.
I watched the trailer and I have reservations.
The whole reason Goodfellas and The Sopranos worked was because, first of all, the creators and producers had years and years of experience in the movie/TV industry, and, second of all, guys like Marty Scorsese and David Chase grew up in Italian-American households and neighborhoods where the mafia had a presence, so they could write realistically about the players without necessarily being in thrall to them.
This kind of detachment is necessary and adds a certain gravitas to proceedings.
No disrespect to "The Neighborhood", but it's clear that William De Meo and most of the actors in the trailer are wannabe wiseguys, and this is just going to be a tacky love letter to the mafia à la Gotti.
It needs the detachment stuff like Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Sopranos had in order to portray a layered and realistic vision of the mob, which doesn't glamorize it in a crass manner.
If I were to edit the trailer in order to make it a more attractive proposition, I would cut down on the, poorly choreographed, fight scenes, I would add more of a law enforcement presence to proceedings beyond having the chick give the middle finger to a couple of stock character cop types, and I would reconsider the tacky church scenes which are clearly intended as a homage to stuff like Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Sopranos, and intended to add an air of gravitas to proceedings; this De Meo guy doesn't have the chops Harvey Keitel did in Mean Streets necessary in order to make it resonate.
Which brings me to the acting. It's atrocious.
In summation, I watched the trailer, and I may have been watching any of the made for TV mob movies from the 90's. It's unneeded. It's not going to reinvent the wheel.
I see De Meo is making the same type of movie over and over. I disagree on Chase growing up in a mob area, same for Scorsese. Scorsese was raised early on in Flushing Queens, when it was Irish and German, with few Italians, and no mob pretense to speak of. Chase if I am not mistaken grew up in the suburbs. De Meo did grow up in Bensonhurst, how much he knows about the mob is debatable, as it is for anyone. I liked parts of a few of his movies, but have never been able to sit through an entire one. It's the same bat hitting, Italian stereotypes, and actors repeated over and over in each film. To his credit, he does better than the low budget directors others who follow the same formula. I agree with you Moe on the Church scene being Mean Streets rip off. It was what I thought too as soon as they were shown, and they were shown more than once just in that trailer.
