Robert De Niro playing a mobster is as familiar a sight as it gets. In The Alto Knights his presence offers a certain reliability: if nothing else, at least he’ll be good. And he is “good.” But even he can’t save a film that talks itself in circles and never quite figures out what it wants to be.
With Barry Levinson (Bugsy, Rain Man) directing and Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) helming the script, The Alto Knights should have been a tight, thrilling mafia epic. Instead, it’s an overstuffed and undercooked history lesson that relies far too much on exposition. The Alto Knights adopts a “tell, don’t show” approach that drains any momentum from the story, making it feel more like a Spotify audiobook with uneven visuals than a feature film.
De Niro pulls double duty as both Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, two mob bosses whose friendship and rivalry in 1950s New York should be the film’s dramatic core. Unfortunately, their dynamic is never fully developed, and the movie struggles to decide which perspective it wants to commit to. The dual-role gimmick doesn’t do The Alto Knights any favours, especially when the prosthetics just make De Niro look like De Niro with different makeup. It’s also not always clear which version of him we’re supposed to be watching, a problem only exacerbated by the film’s incessant narration and lack of coherent visual storytelling.
Adding to the disjointed nature of the film is Debra Messing as Frank’s wife, Bobby Costello. Her role is largely thankless: mainly reacting, worrying, watching TV, and fussing over their two spoilt dogs. Messing’s performance is questionable. Especially distracting is her mishmash of accents which fluctuate wildly from scene to scene. It’s hard to tell what kind of character she’s supposed to be, and the film doesn’t seem to know either. Katherine Narducci, as Vito’s wife Anna, at least gets some fiery moments to play with, but like so many elements in the film, she’s introduced, stirred into the plot briefly, and then discarded.
The Alto Knights feels like a collection of scenes rather than a cohesive story. It skims through major historical events without much weight, relying on narration (and an odd, never-explained device of an older De Niro Frank Costello talking directly to the camera) instead of real dramatic tension. Frank and Vito’s relationship is central to the plot, yet we’re never given a strong enough reason to feel invested in it. Had the film leaned into the idea of Frank as an unreliable narrator, there could have been something truly intriguing here. Instead, it keeps the audience at a distance while expecting us to care deeply about a history that’s never fully fleshed out.
Visually, The Alto Knights gets the 1950s aesthetic right, with a grainy, period-appropriate look that evokes classic mob movies. But style can only do so much when the substance is lacking. There’s very little forward momentum, and way too much talking that often does little more than explain what we should already be seeing unfold naturally.
In the shadow of something like The Irishman, The Alto Knights can’t help but feel like a lesser imitation. But even if you take Scorsese out of the equation (which is difficult both due to marketing and Scorsese’s previous collaborations with Pileggi), the film still struggles to justify its existence. It’s as if it’s begging to be a TV series rather than a two-hour plus movie. A film like this should make you feel immersed in the world of its characters. Instead, The Alto Knights just tells you about it.
The Alto Knights is in cinemas now.
