Antonio Cipriano, Barry Levinson, Cosmo Jarvis, drama, Jean Zarzour, Kathrine Narducci, Luke Stanton Eddy, Michael Rispoli, movies, New York, reviews, Robert De Niro, The Alto Knights, true crime
March 21, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Barry Levinson
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state, from 1957 to the early 1970s, the dramatic film “The Alto Knights” (based on real events) features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: Frank Costello and Vito Genovese are former best friends who become rivals for power in New York’s Mafia community.
Culture Audience: “The Alto Knights” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and Mafia movies and don’t mind watching a derivative Mafia movie that overloads on tedious clichés.
Robert De Niro portraying Mafia bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese is a gimmick in “The Alto Knights” that quickly gets old. The mindless screenplay and bad editing make this botched drama seem like a dull parody. “The Alto Knights” is the Mafia movie equivalent of a past-his-prime Elvis Presley impersonator struggling to look entertaining in a tacky lounge where hardly anyone cares to show up.
Directed by Barry Levinson and written by Nicholas Pileggi, “The Alto Knights” had the potential to be a much better movie than the boring slog it turned out to be. In addition to having a talented cast, “The Alto Knights” has the filmmakers who’ve made some mobster movie classics. Levinson directed 1991’s “Bugsy” about Bugsy Siegel. Pileggi wrote 1990’s “Goodfellas” and 1995’s “Casino,” which both starred De Niro. Both those past glories don’t always guarantee that every movie they make will be just as good or better.
In “The Alto Knights” (which takes place mostly in New York state, from 1957 to the early 1970s), the story is told from the perspective of elderly Frank Costello, who narrates the movie as he looks back on his life. Costello died in 1973, at the age of 82. (For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.)
When Frank looks back on his life in “Alto Knights,” he literally looks back on his life. He looks at old photos in a slide show. It’s supposed to make him look adorably quaint. But the story’s jumbled narrative just makes Frank look like a rambling codger.
“The Alto Knights” begins in 1957, when Frank gets shot in an elevator of his Central Park West apartment in Manhattan. The shooter is a nervous Mafia lunkhead named Vincent Gigante (played by Cosmo Jarvis), a 35-year-old “enforcer,” who spends most his screen time getting berated for bungling the jobs that he’s assigned. “The Alto Knights” goes on a repeat loop of the same types of arguments and conflicts happening, like terrible movies do when they want to fill up time and don’t have anything interesting or clever to show or say.
In an example of the movie’s corny dialogue, Vincent utters this line as he shoots Frank in the head: “This one’s for you, Frank.” Vincent and Frank are the only two people in the elevator during the shooting, so it’s more than ridiculous for Vincent to state the obvious about where he wants his bullet to go. And keep in mind: This is supposed to be a brutal Mafia assassination. The assassin shouldn’t be saying something that sounds like a song dedication in some sort of Rat Pack sing-along with Frank Sinatra.
Frank is shot in the head and is quickly taken to a hospital, where his loyal wife Bobbie Costello (played by Debra Messing) rushes to be by Frank’s side. Bobbie is a stereotypical “don’t ask, don’t tell” shallow Mafia wife who mostly cares about having enough money to spend on the affluent lifestyle that she wants, rather than caring about all the crimes her husband commits to get this money. Bobbie has some of the worst scenes in the movie.
Luckily for Frank, Vincent’s bullet only grazed Frank’s scalp and curved around the back of Frank’s head. It doesn’t take long before Frank finds out that his former best friend/current worst enemy Vito Genovese ordered this murder hit on Frank. In the movie, Frank gives a disjointed explanation for how and why it all went wrong between him and Vito. In flashback scenes and photos of their youth, Luke Stanton Eddy plays Frank in his 20s, and Antonio Cipriano plays Vito in his 20s.
Frank and Vito were working-class best friends who came up in the Mafia crime scene together on the tough streets of New York City. Frank is calm and logical. Vito is bad-tempered and unstable. Frank cares about being accepted into the elite upper crust of society. Vito doesn’t have those ambitions. It’s very much an “opposites attract” friendship.
As for the De Niro playing these two characters, “The Alto Knights” (especially in scenes where Frank and Vito are talking to each other) can only highlight that De Niro just does only slightly different versions of Mafia characters he’s played in many other films. De Niro gives bespectacled Vito more manic energy and a slightly higher voice than Frank, but De Niro slips back into familiar mannerisms that he’s done many times before in movies like “Goodfellas,” “Casino” or 2019’s “The Irishman.” The makeup in “The Alto Knights” is adequate and won’t be nominated for major awards.
Vito and Frank worked with the Luciano crime family (founded by Lucky Luciano) and made a fortune in bootlegging alcohol during the Prohibition era. They liked to hang out at a social club called The Alto Knights, which is not prominently featured in the movie, even though the movie is named after this place. Vito eventually became the boss of the Luciano family.
But when Vito left the United States to hide out in Italy, World War II happened, and Vito was stuck in Italy for several years. During his absence, Frank was named the head of the Luciano family. Frank brags in hindsight, “Suddenly, I was the boss of bosses.” In 1945, the year that World War II ended, Vito returned to the United States and wanted his former job back as boss of the Luciano family.
However, Frank doesn’t want to give up this power. In the narration, Frank says that Vito is too volatile to be an effective crime boss. But, as Frank says in the movie, another big reason why Frank doesn’t want to hand over control to Vito is because Frank has gotten accustomed to the money, power and attention that he gets for being the boss of the Luciano family. You can easily guess how else this movie is going to go with this back-and-forth power struggle.
“The Alto Knights” becomes bloated with pointless scenes and cringeworthy Mafia stereotypes. In other Mafia movies, the bosses are usually portrayed as cunning and ruthless enough to evade capture for years. In “The Alto Knights,” the bosses evade capture simply through bribery or dumb luck.
Scenes that take place at a congressional hearing or at a courtroom trial should’ve crackled with edgy intensity and tension. Instead, these scenes lumber along and have all the suspense of someone reading a phone book. These scenes are just excuses for De Niro to mug for the camera while delivering mundane lines.
One of the movie’s many cringeworthy scenes is when several Mafia members gather for a barbecue somewhere in the rural Appalachian region of New York state, and they find out that they’re being spied on by New York State Police. Frank says in an observational voiceover that Mafia people run as soon as they hear the word “cop.” And right on cue, the Mafia guys are seen running like scattered cockroaches to their cars to leave, even though there’s nowhere they can really escape to in this remote area that has a road with one lane in each direction.
And sure enough, the Mafia guys are stopped on the road, rounded up by police, and questioned by police on the road. A key Mafia member (who won’t be named in this review) narrowly misses this roundup because he was late to the barbecue. When he and his driver drive past the ruckus on the road, they see many of their colleagues being questioned by police. Even though it’s obvious that a major raid is taking place, the dimwit driver repeatedly wonders out loud what’s going on, as his boss is slow to figure it out too.
In other words, the stupidity in “The Alto Knights” knows no bounds. In 1957, when Mafia heavyweight Albert Anastasia (played by Michael Rispoli) is gunned down and murdered in a barber shop, Bobbie absurdly expresses shock that Mafia people can get killed during the day in public. At the funeral, Bobbie comments to Albert’s widow Elsa Anastasia (played by Jean Zarzour) about Albert’s murder: “Who would’ve thought in broad daylight? In a barber shop! You’ve got to be brave. Be brave!”
Vito’s wife Anna Genovese (played by Kathrine Narducci) doesn’t have enough of a personality to make a difference to this awful movie. Other characters come and go. A better-written film would’ve told the movie from the perspectives of the feuding Vito and Frank. Instead, “The Alto Knights” is just a one-sided, droning narrative from Frank, whose reminiscing about his ferocious Mafia heyday is less likely to terrify and more likely to put people to sleep.
Warner Bros. Pictures released “The Alto Knights” in U.S. cinemas on March 21, 2025.