Movie review: Double De Niro can't bolster disappointing 'Alto Knights'

LOS ANGELES, March 19 (UPI) -- The Alto Knights, in theaters Friday, is a mob movie in need of enlivening. Though Robert De Niro plays two roles, neither invigorate the sequence of historical events.

The film opens in 1957 New York with crime boss Frank Costello (De Niro) surviving an assassination attempt. He reflects on his lifelong friendship with fellow mobster Vito Genovese (De Niro) and the criminal enterprises that took them down separate paths.

Costello and Genovese were real-life figures of New York organized crime. In Costello's telling, he ran speakeasies during Prohibition to provide alcohol to paying customers.

Genovese ultimately continued his underworld dealings long past prohibition and built his empire despite Costello's warnings. Costello was in charge of the Luciano family while Genovese served in World War II, and by the time he returned, Costello had added legitimate businesses that took attention off the racketeering enterprises.

Furthermore, Costello refused to vacate his position as head of the families, to which Genovese felt entitled. Yet Genovese's continued criminal activities still implicated Costello and his wife, Bobbie (Debra Messing).

De Niro distinguishes Costello and Genovese as separate characters. Costello is the more typical De Niro seen in Goodfellas, Casino and The Irishman, which impressionists love to impersonate.

Genovese, meanwhile, is more of a caricature, down to a James Cagney-style gangster voice. As Genovese, De Niro also wears a prosthetic nose and chin and covers his mole.

The script by Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote Goodfellas and Casino, covers the history from Costello and Genovese's childhoods through the Kefauver Senate Committee Hearings and downfall of the families.

The epic timeline demands a kinetic approach like Martin Scorsese took with his mafia movies. While it is valiant not to imitate a master, Barry Levinson's film collapses under the weight of its subject.

Costello narrates the film, sometimes speaking directly to the camera, like an interview subject in a documentary. Black-and-white still photo montages illustrate many of the events he summarizes.

In a dramatic film, this has the effect of skipping over major significant events and showing characters react to things the viewer barely got to see. Costello is describing the sorts of things that Goodfellas and Casino showed, though a few brutal acts of violence are depicted.

Genovese is the sort of character Joe Pesci played in previous mob films, but the actor apparently only comes out of retirement for Scorsese or Pete Davidson. Casting De Niro in both roles is potentially interesting, but the relationship lacks the connection that would make a betrayal feel poignant.

Costello and Genovese rarely meet in the film. Those meetings amount to little more than disagreements where Costello asks Genovese to go straight and Genovese says no. It does not convey the lifelong friendship of which Costello's narration speaks.

The Alto Knights appears to be afraid to implicate Costello. The film portrays him as so passive he is rather unbelievable.

Costello stopped carrying a gun after his honeymoon and became a legitimate businessman. He still wants everything to blow over since he survived the assassination attempt, so vetoes the retaliation his associates are demanding.

It reflects documented history when Costello cooperates with Senator Estes Kefauver (Wallace Langham) in his hearings on organized crime while every other witness pleads the fifth. This is a good scene and livens up the film for a bit.

By the time Costello organizes a meeting of all the family heads at an upstate New York farm, the film devotes a lot of time to non sequitur dialogue about the history of Mormons during the long drive. That is cinematic real estate that could have been devoted to more relevant material earlier.

The Alto Knights has all the facts, with reasonable allowances for dramatic license to fit in a two-hour movie. It just lacks the emotion and viscerality of other dramatizations of mafia history.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.