The Alto Knights is built around its own take on the famous diner scene in Michael Mann’s Heat: two titans, two ends of the moral spectrum, sit across from each other in a booth, like generals engaged in a tête-à-tête in no man’s land. The twist is that, this time, both men are Robert De Niro.
Here’s a project that, on paper, is made to lure a certain kind of cinephile into a state of ecstasy. The actor, in dual roles, works off a script by Nicholas Pileggi, the former journalist who adapted his own non-fiction books into the films Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995). It may not be Martin Scorsese behind the camera this time, but director Barry Levinson has his own pedigree, having made the likes of Diner (1982) and Bugsy (1991). The film’s cinematographer, conveniently, is Heat’s own Dante Spinotti.
Yet that headline scene, in reality, slips by without much incident. De Niro plays both Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, key figures in New York crime history, whose friendship-turned-rivalry led Genovese to order a hit on Costello. The men were not twins, relations, or individuals famously known to bear a physical resemblance (they’re played by two different actors in flashback). Instead, De Niro’s doubled presence would imply a metaphorical link – the impulsive Genovese, quick to dip his toes into the risky world of narcotics, represents the Jungian shadow, the ugly desires repressed by Costello’s stoic, more honourable brand of criminal.
But De Niro, as mighty as he may be, can’t distinguish these two men in a way that justifies the stunt. Costello sees the actor in a mode of affable nonchalance, describing corruption and bullet-riddled bodies as if they were no less a part of working life as filing paperwork. Genovese, however, doesn’t come across as especially volatile. He’s the same with a squeakier voice (there’s a touch of his Goodfellas co-star Joe Pesci) and prosthetics that make it look like he’s wearing an inside-out latex mask of Robert Duvall.
There’s a presumed weight and urgency to The Alto Knights, considering not only the talent involved, but the fact its story has been bouncing around Hollywood since the late Seventies, only to be snatched up by Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav shortly after his ascension into the role.
But Pileggi’s screenplay and Levinson’s scattershot direction, like De Niro, make little out of the clash of ideologies at the film’s centre. What could be biblical, feels passionless. We spend almost no time with the men in their younger, fonder years (perhaps because, without The Irishman’s pricey de-ageing technology, it would mean time away from De Niro), so understand little about their bond or first spark of division. Instead, Levinson and his editor, Douglas Crise, rely on a confusing bit of framework: out of nowhere, an older Costello will begin addressing the camera as if he were a talking head in a Netflix true crime documentary, intercut with newspaper headlines, photographs, brief flashbacks, and historical footage.
At other times, the film more successfully follows traditional narrative. There’s an extended, Goodfellas-esque quarrel about the history of Mormonism between Genovese and his lackey Vincent Gigante (Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis, the film’s secret MVP for his physical dedication to the role of gormless pawn whose neck strains painfully against his tight shirt collars). Sure, The Alto Knights might provide double the De Niro, but you could easily achieve the same effect by playing Goodfellas and Casino on two screens side by side. It would be about as cohesive an experience.
Dir: Barry Levinson. Starring: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli. 15, 123 minutes.
‘The Alto Knights’ is in cinemas from 21 March
