Inside you there are two mobsters, and Robert De Niro plays both.
There’s a scene near the limp climax of Barry Levinson’s utterly somnambulant The Alto Knights in which Vito Genovese (De Niro) argues violently with his meathead driver and muscle Vincent Gigante (Cosmo Jarvis) about whether or not Palmyra, NY is the birthplace of Mormonism. Palmyra is the birthplace, but Vito is convinced it isn’t, and he is such a hothead narcissist he nearly strangles Vincent to death. The scene goes on for an obnoxiously long time. There are “jokes” about golden books and a lot of yelling. With no apparent thematic or narrative purpose, the unending scene is an unfortunate metonym for Levinson’s entire enterprise. It is, in other words, a complete waste of time, barely aping properly the mob genre for which it is now sure to be an afterthought.
Loosely, the film is nothing more than a bizarrely boring showcase for the gimmick of De Niro playing mafioso frenemies. Not unlike his character Frank Sheeran in The Irishman, De Niro’s Frank Costello/Vito Genovese doubling is similarly a self-reflexive casting that aims for a larger comment on the mythology of the mafia film, a mythology that Levinson concomitantly pairs with the mythology of America. Black and white still photos dot the sluggish runtime as if historicizing itself within the context of a nation that has sold itself on an uncommon talent for image-making, but in reality this tired formal aesthetic choice just reads like something from a student’s tardily handed-in homework on the history of prohibition America.
Both Costello and Genovese see themselves as stewards of the American promise. Friends since their youth, the two grow up together in petty thievery which leads to dual lives in organized crime. But, where Genovese is cutthroat with very little, if any, moral boundaries, Costello is a more moral boss. At least that’s the way he sees and communicates it, as he does in a solipsistic and entirely too frequent voice-over (to whom Costello is speaking is never made clear, and it is entirely possible the lifeless De Niro is merely talking to himself to stay from falling asleep). Set primarily in New York in 1957, The Alto Knights is almost impressive in how inactive it insists on being. But, more or less, it is a film about Costello trying to retire soon after Genovese orders a hit on him that fails to succeed. That is the first scene of the film — and from then on out nearly nothing happens except an endless stream of backroom coded conversations and occasional murders.
De Niro’s status as one of the silver screen’s truly great legends is cemented in stone, but let’s just say that it would be best if The Alto Knights remains nothing but a blip on his resume, a small ripple of which no one knows the source. He is barely present — though, who could blame him, since nothing in this film succeeds to assert a purpose. As Costello, De Niro is a mumbling, self-aggrandizing corpse who sees himself as a baron of goodness, for which the only example we’re given is his devotion to his wife Bobbie (Debra Messing, whose severe New York accent is so egregiously out of place she feels as if she’s stuck in a sitcom). As Genovese, De Niro is channeling some version of his oft-seen mafia partner Joe Pesci, with a voice that is slightly higher pitched, a comically oversized jaw, and a temper that flares at the drop of a hat.
It’s hard to fathom what Levinson was going for with The Alto Knights, which mostly feels as if ChatGPT was fed every known mafia film and asked to spit out the most enervating amalgamation of tritely coded dialogue. It’s almost like the 92-year-old Nicholas Pileggi forgot he wrote the all-timers Goodfellas and Casino but then was asked to kind of, sort of, regurgitate it. Given that much of the other talent behind the camera are also nonagenarians, perhaps it makes sense that the film is so achingly inert, which, sure, serves as some kind of interesting mirror to a story about Costello’s desire to retire from a life of crime, but there’s just not nearly enough there there to make any of it indelible. In a film about one person’s quest for retirement, Pileggi and Levinson have inadvertently made a pretty good argument to retire the genre altogether.
Title: The Alto Knights
Distributor: Warner Bros
Release date: March 21, 2025
Director: Barry Levinson
Screenwriter: Nick Pileggi
Cast: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli, Michael Adler, Ed Amatrudo, Joe Bacino, Anthony J. Gallo, Wallace Langham, Louis Mustillo, Frank Piccirillo, Matt Servitto, Robert Uricola
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr