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The Alto Knights Relates Curious Mafia History in a Mundane Manner

The Alto Knights would have been a better movie if it had been made twenty or more years ago. The story of its fascinating chapter of mafia history and corruption might have still had some juice to it, it’s filmmaking might not have appeared quite so dated, and there may have been more energy made of Nicholas Pileggi’s script coming off of his gangster hits in Goodfellas and Casino. It also would not have necessitated the extreme make-up and effects needed to make Robert De Niro look twenty years younger. In spite of exceptional efforts, there is a tiredness that comes off of him and off of the story itself for as much as its substance is still very intriguing.
I wonder if a part of that doesn’t come from the movie’s director Barry Levinson, who carries a certain degree of industry heavyweight as an Oscar-winner, but who has since Rain Man made far more bad movies than good or memorable ones; and he hasn’t directed one at all since the much reviled Rock the Kasbah ten years ago. The Alto Knights gives him maybe a slightly more respectable movie to potentially be his last, but there is little life to his handling of it. If not for De Niro, it might be a complete slog.
De Niro is also curiously and a bit arbitrarily cast in a dual role here for no real illustrative or thematic point (my guess is Al Pacino couldn’t do this movie and there’s no other Italian-American actor of the same age or reputational heft). He acts as both Frank Costello, acting boss of the Luciano crime family through the 1940s and 50s, as well as Vito Genovese, a childhood friend and fellow mobster who would succeed him in taking it over. The film concerns the movements of both in the late 1950s, including Genovese’s failed hit on Costello, the latter’s subsequent retirement and former’s efforts to consolidate power, as well as the Kefauver Hearings and increased media scrutiny on the world of organized crime in this era, arguably the dominant period in the history of the mafia.
The narrative itself is rich enough and the characters -at least the two leads- fairly colourful. De Niro plays them as complete contrasts in demeanour -where Costello is intuitive and diplomatic, Genovese is an irresponsible firebrand who will kill two guys over a minor perceived infraction against his wife, thus drawing legal and media attention to the entire mob sphere. De Niro even puts on a different voice as Genovese, a slightly higher register than he usually speaks in -to try and emphasize that these are different people even through their scenes together. His instincts to do so are fine and the characters are separated just enough that you can forget they are the same actor -at least apart from the heavy plastic-look of the make-up and visual effects done to turn De Niro into Genovese. His face looks unnaturally swollen and his expressions seem very limited. While body language, vocal mannerisms and other techniques can make up for this, it still comes off as a performance hindrance, doing little to avert the argument an eighty-year-old De Niro should not be playing this part.
His fire does come out a little more in Costello, but only ever in a form that feels like a milder version of what he did six years ago in The Irishman, which probably ought to have been his gangster movie swansong the way it was Scorsese's. The shadow of The Irishman and of Goodfellas hangs over the movie, yet it never musters anything like the poignancy of the former or the bombast of the latter. It feels very dispassionate overall and that comes out as well in some of its B-tier casting around De Niro. Debra Messing and Katharine Narducci as the principal love interests for example -though Narducci is actually quite good, especially during a hearing scene where she proudly implicates Genovese in all manner of criminal activity. But there's nobody else who really lends the movie the weight of its story -there aren't even any interesting character actors around. Cosmo Jarvis as Vincent Gigante is the only other curious casting choice, but he winds up with little to work with apart from a timid temperament.
Levinson's direction is broadly competent but never interesting in the way this subject matter demands. His best choices in terms of editing or composition feel again like hollow approximations of Scorsese -which is not nothing as they can make for good imitations. But he's not the first director to rely on that and it keeps the movie from resonating in any kind of distinct way. He does allow the story to dominate, knowing its chronicle of events leading up to the famous mafia summit is what most grips the audience. And the script does convey the drama and tension between Genovese and Costello modestly well. Their personalities come across strongly and the environment they exist within in 1950s New York is established acutely. A sense is drawn of the lineage and scope of organized crime in New York, Costello and Genovese having been associates and pupils of Lucky Luciano -there at the founding of the Five Families- and Genovese’s own protege Gigante would carry things into the end of the twentieth century. And the touchstones of the specific history being related, such as the hearing where Costello’s face is kept off camera or the assassination of Albert Anastasia (Michael Rispoli) over Genovese’s paranoia, are interesting enough that the uninspired technicals don’t matter so much. It must also be said the movie is genuinely funny and entertaining in places -you can see where that texture of Goodfellas or even The Sopranos is rising to the surface -particularly in the more mundane interactions (De Niro thankfully isn’t required to be too active in the violent confrontations of this mob story). Once again, it feels only a few touches away from being a really good gangster movie -only its handled by the wrong people at the wrong time.
Coming out of The Alto Knights (named for the club that both mobsters got their starts in at the dawn of Prohibition), I found myself engaged with the material but not the presentation. And I don’t believe this would have been the case were it made by younger more energized artists whose approach is just a little more creative and conveys less the sense of just giving De Niro another gangster flick while there’s still time. It is an experience more mediocre than he in this context deserves.

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