Worth seeing:

for Robert De Niro's twin performance as rival gangsters in an otherwise anticlimactic and uninspiring damp squib of a gangster film

Director:	Barry Levinson
Featuring:	Robert De Niro, Bob Glouberman, Cosmo Jarvis, Debra Messing, Ed Amatrudo, James Ciccone, Jeffrey Grover, Joe Bacino, Kathrine Narducci, Louis Mustillo, Matt Servitto, Wallace Langham
Length:	123 minutes
Certificate:	15
Country:	US
Released:	21st March 2025

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Aging gang boss Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) is thinking about retiring. His former friend and now rival for control of the mob, Vito Genovese (also Robert De Niro), is happy to speed up the process; he gets one of his goons (Cosmo Jarvis) to whack him but the bullet just grazes his head and he survives.

Frank’s henchmen urge him to show that no-one can be allowed to get away with targeting a boss, but he just wants to get out quietly.

Tensions grow as Genovese tries to lead the gang further into the drugs underworld, against the wishes of Frank.

Frank eventually arranges a meeting of all the mob bosses around the country, where he plans to hand power formally to Vito – but Frank is running late…

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

Starring Robert De Niro (star of the classic gangster films Casino and Goodfellas), written by Nicholas Pileggi (writer of the classic gangster films Casino and Goodfellas) and directed by Barry Levinson (director of the classic gangster film Bugsy), you’d think this couldn’t go wrong. But it’s oddly anticlimactic.

We’re supposedly watching the “based on true events” collapse – or at least weakening – of the entire US mafia movement, yet we’re largely watching a bunch of elderly men, sitting around talking.

With two rival gangsters battling for supremacy of the mob, you’d expect gun battles, ripping the streets to shreds, spraying everything in sight in blood, but apart form the opening sequence of the failed hit on Frank, we hardly see a gun, as we spend most of our time watching a bunch of old men talking to each other – in cafes, basements, meeting rooms, cars, farms.

Perhaps because Frank is ready to sign off, there are oddly no consequences for one of the worst thing a gangster can do – try to whack his own boss. Just a bit more talking. What could have – and should have – felt like another gangster epic feels like a bit of a damp squib.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks – with Frank narrating – as we see the younger men as friends and their older selves as rivals. We see their wives keeping them in line from the sidelines.

The main talking point is the casting, which seems somewhat perverse. In an industry bursting with Italian American tough guys, who’ve portrayed the lead and supporting characters of films and TV shows from The Godfather and Goodfellas to The Sopranos, I guess Robert De Niro would be pretty near the top of your wish list – even if he’s about 15 years too old to play Frank. But why on earth did they need him to play Vito too? There was talk – at one point – of this film reuniting De Niro with his Heat co-star Al Pacino, but with that not happening, was there really no-one else in Hollywood, qualified to play a hoodlum?

The biggest moments of tension are the clashes between the rivals – and you don’t get the fizz of two actors up against each other, because the two parts are played, one and a time, by the same man. It’s perverse. De Niro, Levinson and Pileggi should know better. This isn’t an acting class – it’s a Hollywood movie.

Rather than being a chronicle of a defining moment for the American mafia, The Alto Knights is a rather twee account of an elderly man planning his retirement, as an aging actor has a go at playing two very different characters at the same time.