The Alto Knights review – if it ain’t broke…

Robert De Niro is undoubt­ed­ly one of the greats, but even though the scales tip heav­i­ly in his filmography’s favour along­side the per­fect­ly mod­u­lat­ed turns in Scors­ese or Cop­po­la clas­sics there is still unig­nor­able tosh with painful­ly unfun­ny non­sense or brazen geezer teasers. His lat­est, The Alto Knights, from the semi-leg­endary film­mak­ing fig­ure Bar­ry Levin­son, strikes some­where in between. While it’s unsub­tle, pre­dictable, and noth­ing we haven’t seen from both in far supe­ri­or films, it’s also kind of a hoot.

De Niro plays two leg­endary gang­sters, Frank Costel­lo and Vito Gen­ovese, who can be most eas­i­ly dis­tin­guished as the one with a fake pointy nose and the one who seems to have nicked Col­in Farrell’s pros­thet­ics from The Pen­guin. Frank is the more lev­el-head­ed of the crime boss­es, hav­ing sus­tained decades of rel­a­tive peace across the mafia, play­ing by their self-enforced rules, schmooz­ing and pay­ing off enough politi­cians and law enforce­ment to keep every­one hap­py and his beloved wife and pup­pies lux­u­ri­at­ing in dia­monds and minks. But when his old pal Vito returns from self-imposed exile in Europe, his approach proves too ruth­less, and the pair enter a pas­sive-aggres­sive par­a­sitic rela­tion­ship, where one can only thrive if the oth­er withers.

The film large­ly cen­ters around the real-life events of 1957, where their rival­ry came to a head, and then flash­es back­wards and for­wards to con­tex­tu­al­ize the falling out. This is punc­tu­at­ed by the tru­ly puz­zling choice of hav­ing De Niro’s Frank break the fourth wall to stare down the cam­era and explain pre­cise­ly what is going on, often just recap­ping the pri­or scene or remind­ing us of char­ac­ters’ names. There’s a sense that this was made with a sec­ond screen in mind, and Levin­son et al. have a com­plete lack of faith in their audience’s atten­tion span.

In a fur­ther strike against it, none of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters are giv­en much to do beyond tru­ly embar­rass­ing turns from Debra Mess­ing as Frank’s wife and Cos­mo Jarvis as a mob heavy. Messing’s one note is just say­ing all lines assertive­ly, while Jarvis seems just as con­fused as any­one as to why he’s in this film. And that lack of atten­tion and care to any­thing beyond De Niro abounds. To quote Clue­less, when it comes to the com­po­si­tions of the shots, the pro­duc­tion design, and the cos­tum­ing, it’s ​“a full-on Mon­et” ie.​“From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big old mess.”

But once you get used to some of its per­plex­ing choic­es, there’s fun to be had here. De Niro has deli­cious chem­istry with him­self, which becomes more amus­ing when imag­in­ing how he would have been per­form­ing these duo­logues to an emp­ty void. The film is far bet­ter when it leans into sim­i­lar flights of absur­di­ty, with mob lead­ers flee­ing crime scenes with a shrimp cock­tail too good to leave behind, debat­ing the ori­gins of Mormonism’s gold­en tablets, or coax­ing a spoiled Pomeran­ian into a stroll. As the inevitable plot beats slow­ly unspool, there’s a strange com­fort in its pre­dictabil­i­ty and De Niro’s gen­tle com­ic tim­ing while rhap­so­dis­ing about upstate New York’s apples. And while this film won’t go down as one of the greats, it’s cer­tain­ly not sul­ly­ing anyone’s legacy.