Two of New York City’s most notorious organized crime bosses vie for control of the city’s streets. Once best friends, petty jealousies and a series of betrayals set them on a deadly collision course.

If you’ve seen the trailer for ‘The Alto Knights’, you probably thought it looked like a gangster movie written by AI, hitting all the beats you’d expect from this genre with Robert De Niro starring, in two roles no less. That may be a lazy criticism of any movie that looks derivative these days, but I’d be lying if I said it had given me high expectations for this movie. It has a good pedigree, from De Niro to director Barry Levinson, who has made some good stuff in the past, and a script written by ‘Goodfellas’ veteran Nicholas Pileggi. So how was it?

As mentioned it stars Robert De Niro in dual roles as former friends turned warring mobsters Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. De Niro plays Costello with more of a straight bat and acts as our narrator for the story (the first of many examples of trying to ape ‘Goodfellas’ to varying degrees of success), while Genovese is De Niro at his most hammy, under heavy prosthetics. His Genovese is funny in parts as he spouts mafia cliches about respect etc but it feels like you have two performances from entirely different movies, although I will give credit for the dual scenes between the two – not many actors can perform so effectively opposite themselves. The main takeaway for me though is that there is no dramatic reason for De Niro to play both roles, given the characters do not look alike or act alike. It’s a gimmick, nothing more, nothing less.

In terms of the narrative, it feels like a bit of a throwback and for those familiar with gangster lore you possibly know this story already as it covers major events in mafia history from the 1950s. It is a well-made movie and I enjoyed it, but I am predisposed to enjoy a gangster story and this is mid-tier at best – we’ve seen all of those involved here do far better work previously. ‘The Alto Knights’ was enjoyable in the moment, but it lacks the spark that someone like Scorsese would have brought, and I suspect that I’ll have forgotten all about it within 2-3 weeks.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Barry Levinson

Starring: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci and Michael Rispoli

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt21815562/