THE STORY – In the 1950s, notorious New York crime bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese vie for control of the city streets. Once the best of friends, petty jealousies and a series of betrayals place them on a deadly collision course that reshapes organized crime forever.
THE CAST – Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci & Michael Rispoli
THE TEAM – Barry Levinson (Director) & Nicholas Pileggi (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 123 Minutes
Robert De Niro…what an actor! Any movie would be lucky to have him. But what could be better than a movie with Robert De Niro? A movie with two Robert De Niros! Or at least, that’s what the team behind the new film “The Alto Knights” seems to think. Here, De Niro plays two different mob bosses. Under heavy prosthetic makeup, he portrays Vito Genovese, and under less heavy makeup, he plays Frank Costello. It’s an interesting concept, to be sure, but it begs the question: Why? It’s unusual for a film to have an actor playing multiple roles when they’re not portraying two people who are related to each other (such as Michael B. Jordan as a pair of twins in the upcoming “Sinners”) or identical versions of each other (Robert Pattinson in “Mickey 17”). Here, the film makes a vague, briefly mentioned point about Frank and Vito being very close friends in their youth before life and underground dealings getting in the way and turning them into rivals. The reason behind this double act is unclear, besides obvious parallels that run through both of their lives. And while De Niro gives an admittedly good performance – although certainly far from his best – the film is a dull, uninspired exercise, brought down by its bizarre premise and unengaging storytelling methods.
“The Alto Knights” begins with a literal bang. The film opens in 1957 in New York City, when Frank is shot in the head in his apartment building’s lobby. Miraculously, he survives this attempted assassination and, knowing his life will be easier if he doesn’t squawk, he pretends not to have seen who shot him. The would-be murderer is Vincent Gigante (Cosmo Jarvis), one of Vito’s henchmen. The film then follows Frank and Vito’s separate but intertwined lives as aging crime bosses and charts how they went from childhood best friends pulling off comparatively lower-tier criminal activity to the dueling Mafia leaders they become.
The film covers a lot of ground. Although it depicts only a slice of time in the two men’s twilight years, many names, incidents, double-crosses, relationships, and conflicting intentions are thrown at the audience. To try and guide them, narration is used to explain and provide a set-up for a lot of what’s happening. Most of this comes from an elderly Frank, giving his perspective from a point in time after the film’s main events occurred. De Niro provides a lot of voiceover, and the film often cuts to him addressing the camera directly. But because the audience is constantly pelted with so much information and exposition, this choice makes it feel as if we’re being subjected to an unwanted storytime with Grandpa, overloaded with vague explanations and too many unfamiliar proper nouns. Near-constant narration can sometimes work, as seen with Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece “Goodfellas,” but where that film flies by, thanks to exciting direction, “The Alto Knights” drags, making the comparison even more unfortunate. Notably, “Goodfellas” and “The Alto Knights” were both penned by screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi; however, the dialogue in the latter isn’t clever or compelling enough to justify the characters’ unceasing chattering.
The onslaught of information presented as un-cinematically as possible via narration leads to a numbing effect. One can only take in so many names and details before they all start to blend together, especially when the film is otherwise unremarkably constructed. The pacing is languid, which is perhaps appropriate given that this is a film about mobsters in their later years, but so is “The Irishman” (which was executive produced by Pileggi). And although that film is nearly twice as long, “The Alto Knights” certainly feels much more lengthy – time being relative and all. Oscar-winner Barry Levinson’s lifeless direction certainly doesn’t help. The camera work is unexceptional, except for some brief showy moments early on that only serve to make the rest of the film look half-heartedly assembled by comparison. Levinson’s greatest flourish is the way he assembles the climactic final sequence, which concerns a meeting of mafia bosses in upstate New York. The screenplay’s set-up and well-structured editing that cuts back and forth between the gathering and a deliberately tardy Frank is exciting and strangely funny – a shocking departure from the film’s previous humdrum approach.
As Frank, De Niro turns in a steady but unremarkable performance. Frank is even-paced in both his speech and general bearing, and at times, it feels like De Niro is simply relying on his presence to do the character work for him (although he does have some fantastic deadpan comedic line deliveries). It’s his scenes as Vito where he really gets to shine. Vito is much more of a livewire than Frank, with a higher-pitched voice that De Niro leans into. And compared to Frank, De Niro gives Vito the energy of a man many years younger, despite Vito only being six years Frank’s junior. Watching De Niro as Vito, his mannerisms and voice actually call to mind Joe Pesci’s legendary performance in “Goodfellas.” And with his impressive makeup, De Niro even somewhat resembles Pesci, almost as if they wanted to cast the mostly retired actor but were unable to for obvious reasons.
As Vito’s muscle, Jarvis makes for an appropriately dopey character without sacrificing his intimidating quality. There’s something dangerous about a stupid person who’s subservient and easily manipulated, something that the film and Jarvis are clearly aware of. As is typical of mob movies, “The Alto Knights” is dominated by men. Debra Messing plays Frank’s wife, Bobbie, and although she does her best to infuse her line readings with an entertaining flair, she doesn’t have much to do. On the other hand, Kathrine Narducci delivers a scene-stealing performance as Anna, Vito’s second wife. She’s unpredictable and unafraid to stand up to her mobster husband and his cronies. Every time she’s on-screen, the movie comes alive. Unfortunately, her character is only around for a relatively small portion of the film.
Apart from some decent performances, “The Alto Knights” is unexciting and fails to make a case for its existence. The story is dutifully told via exhausting narration from Frank in a way that makes it seem like not even he is fully invested in telling it. And the choice to double-cast De Niro is both the film’s most interesting angle and its most mystifying, underexplored, and unexplained element. The lightly Shakespearean irony of the two men going from friends to wishing for the other’s death isn’t enough of an equivalence to justify this casting choice. Perhaps it was done to maximize the amount of time the audience spends with one of the greatest living actors, but that’s not enough.
