The Alto Knights

The Alto Knights is an impressive film, taking inherently interesting material and doing very well not to foul it up. Sure, it’s something we’ve seen de Niro do before, but it leaves you wanting more of it, as he fits this mold perfectly.

It’s not the worst we’ve seen from either Levinson or De Niro but there’s a sense that a pairing of these two working with a Pileggi script should have borne juicer fruits.

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.

Even with De Niro (and De Niro) in the leads, this is mob-movie cosplay, a hollow shadow of previous triumphs. As a mob lawyer might bellow, “Nothing to see here.”

The Alto Knights is a movie whose ambition has passed. It feels like the husk of something that might have been great once.

When all is said and done, The Alto Knights imparts very little about these two men that couldn’t be gleaned by reading their respective Wikipedia pages, and it does it at a sluggish pace and with little visual flair. Some of the biggest and best names to ever work in gangster movies contributed to this film; De Niro and Pileggi, obviously, but also producer Irwin Winkler and director Barry Levinson. Despite their many contributions to this genre in the past, they’ve got nothing new to say here. And they provide zero evidence that casting De Niro in both lead roles is anything more than a gimmick.

So let me be absolutely, 100% clear: “The Alto Knights” is indeed a bad movie, but not the good kind. It doesn’t make you feel alive, it makes you feel dead. It’s a tedious, directionless, bumbling chore of a gangster picture, incoherently written and edited, featuring two of the limpest performances of Robert De Niro’s career.

"The Alto Knights" is a compelling mob drama for a while but it fails to bring any real potential to this real life story and with De Niro playing dual roles it feels very distracting.

This a real old and creaky movie that is so devoid of energy. I'm not sure there is a single cast member under the age of 40. The De Niro double performance was forced and unnecessary.

An interesting premise, poorly told and terribly written. How come writers have become incapable to adapting a compelling narrative into a compellingcinematic story? The Dialogue is also terrible, frequently repeating itself without ever explaining anything.

In a bit of stunt casting, Robert De Niro is cast as two friends who grew up together on the streets of New York and rose to prominence as racketeers in the 50s. With the help of a prosthetic nose, it’s somewhat easy to tell them apart, although they’re both clearly De Niro. Since this is a role that he’s handled before, there’s really nothing new here. Debra Messing is a dramatic surprise as one of his wives. It doesn’t help that Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote “Goodfellas” & “Casino,” didn’t have sufficient steam to make this story much more than a bunch of “wise guys” posturing and bickering. Legendary director Barry Levinson did what he could to add cohesion, but the focus is scattershot leaving a lot of cruel dialogue without any emotional connection. The final scene puts the historical aspect of this true story in focus, but that still doesn’t justify sitting thru this numbing gangster gabfest. BTW, the title refers to the club where they hung out. [usr =2.0]

If you've ever wondered what a mob movie would look like if it were drained of all life, creativity, and purpose, look no further than Alto Knights. This 2025 abortion, directed by Barry Levinson and written by Nicholas Pileggi, takes a genre that once thrived on tension and charisma and turns it into a tedious, directionless slog. Robert De Niro is in a dual role as rival mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, it failed to showcase of his legendary talent of playing himself but delivers a gimmick so flat it's borderline insulting. What could have been a gritty dive into 1950s mob rivalries instead feels like a tired rehash of better films, limping along with no soul, no spark, and no reason to exist.Deniro's dual performance as Genovese and Costello is a gimmick that fails in every way. As Genovese, he's slathered in prosthetics and a laughable accent, doing a bargain-bin Joe Pesci impression that's more caricature than character. As Costello, he's so subdued he might as well be napping, delivering lines with all the enthusiasm of a man reading the phone book. Pileggi, the writer behind Goodfellas and Casino, seems to have lost his touch. Alto Knights drowns in exposition, leaning on De Niro's voice-over to narrate every plot point rather than letting the story show itself. Its not a film and more a lecture. Characters don't develop; they're just mouthpieces for historical bullet **** just over two hours, Alto Knights somehow manages to feel both rushed and endless. It tries to cram in decades of mob lore but skips the meaty conflicts, leaving a trail of half-formed characters and stakes no one cares about. The pacing is so lethargic it makes watching paint dry seem thrilling-scenes drag on with pointless dialogue, then lurch abruptly to the next beat with no rhyme or reason.Levinson, a director who once dazzled with Rain Man and Wag the Dog, seems adrift, his camera swinging wildly as if trying to wake itself up.Debra Messing and Kathrine Narducci are stuck in thankless roles Messing as Costello's wife, Bobbie, reduced to fussing over dogs and staring at the TV. It's a criminal waste of talent, but then, waste is this film's defining trait. The period details, usually a highlight in mob dramas, are half baked, as if the 1950s props were getting hard to come by.Perhaps the worst sin of Alto Knights is its redundancy. Mob movies have been done to death, and this one offers nothing new. No fresh angle, no bold twist, not even a heartfelt nod to the classics. Now that there are no longer any De Niro die hards because he has been an unhinged loser for some time now nobody will find a flicker of enjoyment in the familiar haze of fedoras and cigar smoke. If you want a mob movie, re-watch Godfather 1/2 and Goodfellas and the like. This one's just a stale, overcooked reheating of mushy mob pasta no one asked for.