Ticketworthy! - The Alto Knights

If you’re going to make a movie about the American mafia, it’s usually a good idea to give Robert De Niro a call and see if he’s interested in a role. Nobody does it better than him. When he says he’s willing to play not one, but two different mob bosses in your movie, you don’t question that, you just send him a contract. Having gotten such a stroke of luck, it’s almost understandable why director Barry Levinson decided to make The Alto Knights a showcase for De Niro and not much else. It’s a little unfortunate though, as the story deserved more.

De Niro plays real life New York mob bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, childhood friends who came up through the ranks together and now find themselves at odds with each other. Hot-headed and violent Vito handed control of the family to Frank when he had to flee the country some years ago, and Frank built a less volatile and more lucrative organization during the absence. Now Vito is back, and wants what’s his, but Frank is reluctant to hand power back to his unpredictable friend and undo all the work he’s done. It’s the true story of a man who exposed the entire nationwide mafia, and it’s exactly the kind of work De Niro was made for.

To that point, De Niro is phenomenal in both roles. Not only does he play both gangsters absolutely perfectly, but the performances are also so different and nuanced that even when they are sharing the screen it’s easy to forget they’re being played by the same person. Praising him for this kind of role feels silly, anyone who has seen almost anything else he’s done could have told you he was going to be good here, but I still walked away impressed with just how great he was.

Levinson and cinematographer Dante Spinotti also deserve praise for getting a lot out of the setting. The movie looks really good and is shot well, not shocking given those men’s previous work. Levinson previously directed Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Man, while Spinotti has shot movies like Red Dragon and Public Enemies. They know what they’re doing. My only complaint in that department is the tendency to end scenes with a fade-to-black. It happened several times during the film, and I simply wasn’t a fan of the choice.

That said, at least it was a choice, something I can’t say for much else in the film. There are no risks taken in the script, the acting, or the casting outside of De Niro. It’s as though they just sat him in front of a camera, yelled action, and figured that’s enough for a decent movie. It isn’t. You need drama, you need tension, you need to not feel like you’re watching someone check off boxes on a checklist of mafia movie tropes. This movie gives you none of that. Frank wrestling with retiring and bringing down his former best friend should have had me on the edge of my seat. Instead, it all felt like a foregone conclusion within the first 20 minutes of the movie.

If all you want out of a movie is De Niro giving a powerhouse performance, then I guess The Alto Knights might be for you. If you’re looking for more, anything more at all, I’m afraid there’s just not much there to care about. None of the other casting matters (they’re all fine, they just don’t stand out), the story isn’t told terribly well, and none of it is something you haven’t seen before. No amount of Robert De Niro can fix that.