'The Alto Knights' is a Tired Conventional Mob Film
It's another Goodfellas knockoff. The Alto Knights is sloppy and boring. It's as generic as a mob movie gets. It would make sense that this film plays like Goodfellas as it was written by that film's screenwriter, Nicholas Pileggi. The movie is set in the nineteen fifties and uses narration to anchor the story. There's no real momentum, let alone anything to grasp onto, since we've all seen it before. Director Barry Levinson is clearly trying to capture Martin Scorsese's magic but can't since there's only one true Martin Scorsese. Other films have copied his style to effective use. Films like I, Tonya come to mind as it takes Scorsese's usage of narration and fast pace to good use, capitalizing on the madness of Tonya Harding's wannabe gangster story. The Alto Knights, sadly, is dryer than the Sahara Desert.
It starts off okay, with a failed assassination attempt on Frank Costello. (Robert De Niro). Frank is waiting for the elevator to take him to his apartment until he gets shot in the head by an unknown assassin. Here's where the film gets ridiculous. In almost no time, Frank recovers from the headshot injury overnight. With simply a few bandages, Frank is able to leave the hospital overnight. Really? There's no time waiting for a brain recovery or rehab to get Frank walking again? I get this is based on a true story but come on. I doubt Frank Costello revived over night like that. The man who ordered the hit on Frank is Vito Genovese (also Robert De Niro). The casting of De Niro playing two roles is a gimmick. At the age of 81 years old, De Niro doesn't have the charisma like he used to. Seeing an old man mumbling throughout the entire film is messy. It worked in The Irishman since it's about an old man reflecting on a time that is now gone. In The Alto Knights, the narration is more like a narrative cheat. Not every mob film needs voiceovers.
The duel De Niros is a tacky storytelling method. It makes no sense how these two different guys look and sound the same. But they are different people. Why not just cast De Niro as either Frank Costello or Vito Genovese instead of both characters? What's the point in casting De Niro in both roles if the characters are unrelated? Robert De Niro doesn't have the range to play two wildly different characters. If it was Gary Oldman then you probably would get something that differentiates the characters. In this film, being able to tell between Frank and Vito is reliant almost entirely on wardrobe. Vito sports a hat and sunglasses, whereas Frank doesn't have any head or eye attire. He's just another guy in a suit. The only thing that sets them apart, other than the wardrobe, is personality. Vito is the hothead who shouts a lot, whereas Frank is quiet. One gets mad; the other doesn't.
The film starts in 1957 in New York. Then, later jumps a few years ahead. During this time Frank gets married, has a divorce, and is put on the court bench. The relationship between Vito and Frank starts with their childhood. The flashbacks to childhood are done in black and white. But not only is Frank's childhood in black and white. A number of sequences utilize the color filter for montages of plot elements. It's narratively rushed, let alone doesn't need to exist. The flashbacks play a bit like the Rocky movies. When Rocky Balboa is getting pummeled in the ring, his memory runs wild, cutting frantically to black and white flashbacks at an excessive rate. It's jarringly unnecessary.
The movie jumps from one big occasion to the next with very little room to breathe. It doesn't take its time like Goodfellas or Casino did, and those films pushed the gas hard. The Alto Knights is a collision of big events with exposition dumping. Director Barry Levinson doesn't have any real cinematic stamp to set his movies apart from other directors. He's a bit like a rent-a-director, where you hire him to direct a project that has no directorial-style stamp attached to it.
When the picture reaches its ending, it's underwhelming. There's a lot of buildup to the film that finishes like a deflated balloon. With a frantic pace, pointless double casting of De Niro, sloppy editing, and a dull ending, The Alto Knights is just another mob movie that's overshadowed by Nicholas Pileggi's previous superior work. The mob genre was great for a certain period in the wake of The Godfather and Goodfellas. Now, it's just as old as Robert De Niro.
