PLOT: A personal rivalry between Mafia bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese inadvertently changes the balance of power in the mob forever, revealing to the American public just how vast of a criminal empire it really is.

REVIEW: I understand why The Alto Knights must have been a passion project for everyone involved. Producer Irwin Winkler, star Robert De Niro and writer Nicholas Pileggi are three of the men responsible for the greatest mob movie ever made – Goodfellas -, and it’s fitting that they’d want to be the ones to tell one of the most important Mafia stories of all time. Indeed, Vito Genovese’s attempt to kill Frank Costello kicked off a series of events that eventually led to the testimony of Joseph Valachi, who was the first member of the Mafia to ever acknowledge its existence and popularized the term “Cosa Nostra.” 

Whether or not you like The Alto Knights depends on your interest in mob history. For fans of the genre, such as myself, The Alto Knights is a solid entry, even if its central conceit, being that Robert De Niro plays both Costello and Genovese, doesn’t work as well as you’d hope. For more casual fans, The Alto Knights will likely prove too talky and slow, with director Barry Levinson, an old hand, adopting a more stately approach than someone like Martin Scorsese would have. 

One can’t blame De Niro for wanting to take on both lead roles, and one also has to give him credit for wanting to get this experimental so late in his career. No one can accuse him of phoning it in here, and he does his best to make Costello and Genovese two distinctly different performances. Costello is a more standard De Niro role, with him the soft-spoken elder statesman of the mob who eschews violence and would rather just live a quiet life with his beloved wife, Bobbie (Debra Messing). By contrast, Genovese, who he plays under heavy makeup, feels like a role that might have been tailor-made for his old co-star Joe Pesci, being smaller and prone to explosive bouts of anger.  

De Niro is good in both roles, but having him play opposite himself feels gimmicky. If you think back to the classics of the genre, usually the scenes everyone remembers are the ones where two heavyweights go mano-a-mano. Think Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat, or De Niro and Pesci screaming at each other in the Nevada desert in Casino. More recently, there was Al Pacino and Stephen Graham’s “you people” scene from The Irishman. Given that they’re both playing the same role, Costello and Genovese are rarely in the same frame, although the CGI used for such scenes is solid. Usually, though, it just cuts back and forth between close-ups, and there’s no chemistry between De Niro and himself. As good as he is (and he’s one of the greatest ever), the sequences where the two leads have a go at each other lack the fireworks they would have had Pesci or Pacino played one of the roles opposite De Niro had he been able to choose just one character. Again, I get why he did it, as it’s an interesting experiment for him as an actor, but it makes the movie much less entertaining than it would have been with a different approach.

If you can get over that aspect and appreciate The Alto Knights for what it is, you’ll still get a solid crime drama out of it. Pileggi’s script is terrific, showing how the feud between Genovese and Costello helped end the mob’s heyday. While Levinson opts for a quiet approach, specific sequences are very effective, such as a bit where Costello has to testify before a grand jury as Genovese rages at the televised version of the hearing, which (as in real life) only showed his hands as he spoke.  Levinson, of course, has experience with the material, having made the mob classic Bugsy (as well as the mob-adjacent Sleepers).

As for the supporting cast, Messing has good chemistry with De Niro as Costello’s adoring wife, while The Sopranos vet Kathrine Narducci steals scenes as Vito’s half-crazed wife, Anna. The movie also opts for a surprisingly affectionate depiction of Albert Anastasia – the head of Murder Inc – who’s played by Michael Rispoli as even-tempered and a true blue friend to Costello. The only one I wasn’t sold on was Cosmo Jarvis (of Shogun) as Vincent Gigante, with the device used to give him a bigger chin and neck off-putting (I couldn’t figure out if it was prosthetics or just Jarvis squeezing his neck folds together). His performance is good, but every time I saw him on screen, it just felt like he was unnaturally squeezing his neck folds together, which took me out of the movie.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first movie De Niro’s been in to depict the climatic “Apalachin meeting,” an infamous event where mobsters from all over met at a farm in New York State to broker peace. It was played for laughs in the prologue of Analyze This, and here, Levinson also tries to wring some humour out the fact that all these wise guys ended up riding tractors and traipsing through mud to get away from the state cops. 

While I wish The Alto Knights had been done differently, with different actors playing Costello and Genovese, as a fan of the genre, I still found it an entertaining addition to the mob movie canon. It’s no classic, but if this is your cup of tea (as it is mine), you’ll probably get a kick out of watching old-timers like De Niro, Pilleggi, and Levinson take another whack at the material. 

Alto Knights

GOOD

7

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Warner Brothers has been undergoing some restructuring since it was merged with Discovery. This has caused some uproar in their release schedules and even caused some films to be shelved altogether. Just when things seemed to stabilize, two industry strikes again caused chaos across the board. So, what can we look forward to for the Warner Brothers 2024 release schedule?

Dune Part Two – March 15th

The second installment of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune saga hits theaters. The first one fought against a Covid release but still earned a respectable amount at the box office. Fans of the property seem excited to check out this one, so it should be a decent hit. If the box office is sizable enough for the WB, then a third film will be on the way, as the director has commented that he has already started writing it based on Frank Herbert’s novel Dune Messiah.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – April 12th

A sequel to the Monsterverse film Godzilla vs. Kong. This could be a tough one. With the recent release of Godzilla Minus One, this could be the exact opposite of what fans seem to want from a Godzilla movie at the moment. While fans seem to have been enjoying what Warner Brothers and Legendary have been doing with the films, there have been complaints that it focuses on too many of the human characters. With Godzilla Minus One, we now see that maybe they just wanted a good story. The trailer for this seems to show that this film will do the more hokey action movie version of the monster. Kong even has a cybernetic arm or armor in this one. It honestly could go either way.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – May 22nd

George Miller once again returns to the world of Mad Max. This time though, we focus on Furiosa, whom we met in the last film. This prequel looks to be just as dazzling and adrenaline-inducing as the last film. The only question is if it is coming out too far away from the last film. Will audiences still care about the character? Fury Road came out nine years ago, and nowadays, that is a long time between films in a franchise. I’ll still be there opening night.

The Watchers – June 7th

Ishana Shyamalan has a very famous father, so eyes may end up turning to this film to see if the directing gene is hereditary. She makes her debut with this fantastical story of a woman who gets lost in a forest in Ireland only to end up finding shelter. Three other strangers are already there, and they can’t seem to leave due to the mysterious creatures stalking them at night. Dakota Fanning and Georgina Campbell lead the cast. Sounds like a fun story, so hopefully, it will find an audience in the summer season.

Trap – August 2nd

This year we’re getting triple the Shyamalan as M. Night Shyamalan has this new film coming out just a few months after his daughter’s. Then his other daughter Saleka will be in this film. Not much is known about the plot, but it is supposed to take place at a concert. The cast is filled out with Josh Harnett and Hayley Mills which was a name I did not expect to see. For younger fans, she played twins in the original Parent Trap, released back in 1961. She has been doing more work recently, and it is interesting to see her cast in a Shyamalan film. Is his name still enough to draw fans out to the theater? I guess we’ll find out.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice – September 6th

Michael Keaton is putting the striped suit back on for this sequel that has taken decades to finally happen. Tim Burton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara also return as their original characters. The likes of Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Jenna Ortega join the afterlife to fill out the rest of the cast. We’re still waiting on a trailer or even just a plot description, but in reality, this film will at least make a lot of money opening weekend. How it goes after that, we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully, the wait was worth it. This is probably the most anticipated film on the Warner Brothers 2024 release schedule.

Joker: Folie A Deux – October 4th

This will be the first DC film released under the new DC Elseworlds banner that will set apart individual films that don’t play into the continuity of what will be considered the DCU. Joaquin Phoenix returns as the titular character, while Lady Gaga joins the cast as this world’s Harley Quinn. With the character being so popular after Margot Robbie played her, it will be interesting to see if fans are okay with multiple actors playing the same character. While we’ve had lots of actors play Batman and Superman, Harley Quinn has only had one on-screen portrayal so far. The fact that this film is also a musical should make it an interesting stand-out among comic book films.

Alto Knights – November 15th

Any time Robert De Niro enters a film about Italian mobsters, filmgoers immediately are interested. This time, he’s playing two roles with Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. Based on a true story, Costello was a retired mob boss, but Genovese still put a hit out on him. Set in 1957, this seems like a movie right in De Niro’s wheelhouse. Can he pull off playing two roles? That is what could end up sinking it. Even still, the prospect of this film has me intrigued enough to check it out.

Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim – December 13th

This animated prequel will be set 183 years before the events of the original trilogy of films. Not sure if fans are clamoring for more Lord Of The Rings content after so-so reviews of The Rings Of Power, but here we are. As a two-hour movie, it may bring more fans in, especially fans of the original films. This will tell the story behind Helm’s Deep, which is a fascinating location for most Rings followers. The only cast member from the originals to return is Miranda Otto as Eowyn, but with Brian Cox on board as Helm Hammerhand it at least will have some gravitas to it.

What films are you looking forward to from Warner Brothers 2024 release schedule? Let us know in the comments.

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