The Alto Knights: De Niro Pulls Double-Duty for a Dull Mobster Dud

Thank god for Martin Scorsese. In addition to committing himself to the preservation of cinema’s history while simultaneously contributing to that history with classic after classic of his own, the golden standard of Italian-American representation offers one more invaluable service to the moviegoing public: the man provides irrefutable proof that his main man Robert De Niro remains one of the greatest actors who’s ever lived—one who can still, when called upon, actually care about the film he’s in and put in the work beyond endorsing the cheque.

One would think, then, that this is an implicit dig against Barry Levinson’s The Alto Knights—a rote mob saga so indebted to the standard Scorsese has set that each ticket may as well come with a free subscription to the Criterion Channel—and De Niro’s performance(s) therein, but believe it or not, for all of the many, many faults plaguing Levinson’s envisioning of the Costello-Genovese feud, De Niro comes out seeming most invested in its outcome. Unfortunately, in a comparative sense, that basically puts the man on par with anyone who manages to come out of these two hours without the exact contours of their wristwatch permanently etched into their brains.

In The Alto Knights, De Niro plays reputed mob boss Frank Costello, who’s time as the “boss of bosses” in New York’s underworld has led to an era of relative peace in the land. That is, of course, until the return of his childhood friend Vito Genovese, the man who handed him the reins of their enterprise while he fled the country to avoid indictment for murder. Now that Genovese (also played by De Niro) is back, the hotheaded counterpart to Costello’s measured operator wants back in, despite what the greater organization feels about who would be best left at the top.

Costello’s commitment to his friendship persists in spite of Genovese’s clear thirst for power at any cost, to the extent that, when the latter makes an open attempt on Frank’s life in 1957, the victim’s first response is to heed the warning signs and simply give up the business for good. Whether or not Vito is keen on believing this resignation, however, is another matter altogether, and the ensuing back-and-forth between the aspiring retiree and the bottomless pit of violence and psychopathy paints the city that never sleeps with an endless parade of fireworks.

Under normal circumstances, when a single actor is cast in dual roles, there tends to be a central gimmick at play; either the characters in question are twins, clones, or one is simply made-up to look entirely different from the other. In The Alto Knights, however, no such conceit is given to connect Costello and Genovese, leading one to the conclusion that the gimmick in question is merely the marketing point of plastering “Starring Robert De Niro… AND Robert De Niro” all over the posters and trailers. Though makeup is indeed applied to De Niro’s Genovese to make him look somewhat closer to his real-life counterpart, by and large, there isn’t all that much on the table in this casting choice besides the novelty of its octogenarian star showing that he’s invested enough to sit on both sides of the frame every now and then.

It’s a genuine credit to the film that De Niro’s makeup and dual performances are diverse enough that audiences are never left confused as to who they are watching at any given time—in both facial structure and personality, De Niro’s Genovese performance finds him channelling his old buddy Joe Pesci more than anyone else—but once the praise for a surprising amount of care in this paycheque gig subsides, what’s left is a film that has absolutely no idea what, if anything, it wants to communicate through those evocations.

Levinson, who isn’t at all unfamiliar with De Niro’s skills (see Wag the Dog) nor capable mob biopics (see Bugsy), here finds himself wandering through history, trying to find a greater meaning that makes this flashy piece of mob war legend worth more than a passing mention in a Wikipedia article. That greater purpose may exist, but Levinson spends two hours sifting through Costello’s jacket pockets only to come out with a pocket full of lint where a wad of cash should be. The Alto Knights seems intent on embracing its elegiac atmosphere, but Nicholas Pileggi’s (of Goodfellas fame) script appears entirely unconvinced of its own sense of meaning, in either pacing or dialogue; aside from the revelatory gem about how America’s politicians are “bigger gangsters than we ever could be” (mind = blown), these crooks refer to themselves and each other as “racketeers” so often that it comes across more like a propaganda piece penned by J. Edgar Hoover.

If Scorsese’s The Irishman was a swan song for the genre that put him on the map in the form of a carefully planned five-course meal, then The Alto Knights is a cutout of Robert De Niro’s face slapped onto a pack of Lunchables. At every turn, Costello’s passivity is sold to us as strategy, and were the film not so passive itself in virtually every respect, then we might be inclined to believe that proposition. As it stands, though nothing about the film reads as a maliciously motivated cannibalization of the genre that propelled most of those involved in its making to the big leagues, Barry Levinson certainly appears, like Costello himself, to want out of the game at all costs.

still courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.

Julian Malandruccolo

letterboxd.com/CynicOfCinema/