Review: 'The Alto Knights' struggles to earn a place in the pantheon of gangster cinema
Named after a New York social club frequented in the 1950s by the Luciano and Genovese crime families, "The Alto Knights" hits theaters riding hard on the gimmick of casting Robert De Niro in two roles: mob boss Vito Genovese and his mafioso frenemy Frank Costello.
No shade on De Niro -- at 81, he's still the capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses)among his generation of actors. But seeing him act with himself feels like a stunt that has the undesirable effect of taking us out of the action and into something resembling a comic parody.
How much better if, say, Al Pacino -- De Niro's scene partner in 1995's "Heat" and 2019's "The Irishman" -- took one of the roles. As it is, "The Alto Knights" fails to achieve takeoff despite the efforts of Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson ("Rain Man," "Bugsy") and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who scripted two Martin Scorsese classics, "Goodfellas" and "Casino."
"The Alto Knights" makes much of the fact that Vito and Frank were friends as boys, growing up on mean streets that prepped them to make their bones in the organization of Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Levinson uses black-and-white footage and still photography to give the past a documentary feel to reflect the life and times of the declining mob in its gory glory days.
"The Alto Knights" begins in 1957, when Vito tags Vincent "the Chin" Gigante ("Shogun" dreamboat Cosmo Jarvis) to whack Frank. The attempt fails, which sends Frank running while he takes on the role of narrator, laboriously telling us how everything went down.
The main action of the film is given over to two grandpas fighting for relevance in a world that's passed them by. De Niro leans heavily into makeup and prosthetics to differentiate between the dueling goodfellas. His Vito, returned from exile in Sicily, is a hothead with a needling, Joe-Pesci-like whine. His Frank, who took over the family in Vito's absence, has a longer nose, fancier duds and fake aura of respectability that irritates Vito to violent distraction.
The bosses also have wives. Debra Messing ("Will & Grace") excels as Frank's Jewish spouse Bobbie, but Kathrine Narducci ("The Irishman") ups the ante on attitude as Anna, Vito's volatile, club-owning, barely better half.
The operative phrase in "The Alto Knights" is a De Niro line from "Taxi Driver." By that I mean, "You talking to me?" There's way more "talk" than action as the film slogs through the decades. Levinson breaks up the verbal blather by including scenes such as the barber shop assassination of Costello's buddy, Albert Anastasia (a terrific Michael Rispoli).
Still, the film's only reason for being is the sight of De Niro going mano a mano with De Niro. Vita and Frank have fun badgering each other in a candy store and Levinson includes a scene of Vito going ballistic watching Frank on TV as he testifies before a Senate subcommittee.
And what revenge did Frank exact against Vito for trying to murder him? The film suggests that the 1957 police raid against a Vito-arranged mob summit meeting in upstate New York -- an event said to mark the beginning of the end for the mafia -- might have been Frank's doing.
Don't look to "The Alto Knights" for answers. As the film drags to a climax, audiences are left with the sorry sight of Levinson, Pileggi and a double dose of De Niro struggling to meet and even surpass their well-earned place in the pantheon of gangster cinema. It's a losing battle.
