Film Review: THE ALTO KNIGHTS (2025): Barry Levinson’s New Mob Drama is a Gimmick That Rarely Pays Off
The Alto Knights Review
The Alto Knights (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Barry Levinson, written by Nicholas Pileggi and starring Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Kathrine Narducci, Cosmo Jarvis, Michael Rispoli, Frank Piccirillo, Matt Servitto, Louis Mustillo, James Ciccone, Joe Bacino, Luke Stanton Eddy, Antonio Cipriano, Brian Scolaro, Wallace Langham, Ed Amatrudo and Mike Seely.
Barry Levinson is a skilled filmmaker, but his latest mob drama, The Alto Knights, relies too much on its major gimmick to get audiences in the door. That “hook” is that Robert De Niro plays two gangsters instead of one in this new picture. De Niro has the distinction of imitating himself as Frank Costello and emulating Joe Pesci to portray Vito Genovese in Levinson’s half-baked drama which plays out predictably with a few surprises sprinkled in just for the heck of it. Levinson is the man behind the great mob drama, Bugsy, which is one of the best mob films ever made, so to see The Alto Knights only occasionally succeed is a bit disheartening.
One can almost envision Levinson pitching The Alto Knights to a studio stating it’s a new spin on the mob movie by having one of our all-time great actors play two parts. De Niro’s performance, though, isn’t as strong as previous roles the actor has done. It’s not bad work from De Niro, but the film is ultimately flat and often feels like it’s been done before albeit without the gimmick of a huge actor playing two lead roles. The gimmick sort of undermines the integrity of the movie, leaving audiences wondering why this movie didn’t go straight to streaming.
This film opens with Frank Costello being shot in his apartment building. However, the bullet barely scrapes his head despite blood being all over the elevator mirror. Costello simply ends up in the hospital. Debra Messing plays Costello’s wife, Bobbie, who has little dogs because she can’t have kids. Bobbie is, surprisingly, a character that lacks a lot of depth. Played with a fair bit of dramatic flair by Messing, the actress doesn’t necessarily falter in the part. Messing just has too little screen time to make much of an impression. Bobbie rushes to Frank’s side in the hospital but Frank states that he’s still coming home despite the fact someone is out to get him.
Though the movie analyzes the friendship between Frank and Vito when they were younger, the movie ends up feeling calculated and empty as the plot progresses. Vito is eventually out to get Frank as both men end up on the stand in court at different intervals. While Vito pleads the fifth in a hilarious way, Frank talks more than he should, and that gets Vito angry.
A significant portion of the latter part of the picture is dedicated to scenes between Frank and his confidante, Richie (an OK Frank Piccirillo). A well-directed scene shows them in a funeral parlor with coffins in the background discussing the next steps in their plan to evade being knocked off by Vito. This is typical Levinson territory and, here, Levinson symbolizes the themes of his plot with metaphorical images such as having the conversation in the funeral home.
Then, there’s the whole set of barbecue sequences where a bunch of mobsters gather at a liquor giant named Joe (Louis Mustillo)’s home and are set up with the authorities in pursuit of them for potential bootlegging. When Vito shows his driver’s license to a trooper, it has Vito as being a different height than his ID says. That’s funny, but these scenes are a bit lacking in terms of genuine suspense although they’re purely entertaining in a rather simplistic way.
De Niro is better as Costello than Genovese. That doesn’t mean De Niro hasn’t made one too many gangster movies during his distinguished career. It seems like De Niro is performing like his The Irishman co-star, Joe Pesci, as Genovese and it, ultimately, doesn’t feel like a genuine character re-creation by De Niro. Genovese criticizes one of his men for missing Costello when attempting to kill him in his apartment building, but these scenes are repetitive as Genovese makes his worker feel dumb at least three times for not shooting Costello twice to make sure he was dead. De Niro isn’t as big a problem, though, as the movie’s generic script which covers a lot of ground that feels all too familiar for a director of Levinson’s caliber.
As friends who become enemies, De Niro has a lot of fun in these showy roles, but this is an experiment better suited for a smaller budgeted streaming movie than a big-screen event. I wasn’t necessarily bored by The Alto Knights, but even its ending feels a bit too familiar for a movie that was looking to break new ground by having a great actor play two lead parts. This attempt at a gimmick for a new type of mobster movie is only barely adequate for audiences who haven’t seen De Niro’s previous gangster films, many of which far surpass The Alto Knights.
Rating: 6/10
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