The Alto Knights (2025)

You’d think that putting Robert De Niro in two mob roles, directed by Barry Levinson, would be an offer no film lover could refuse. Yet The Alto Knights somehow makes that offer and still manages to underdeliver. It’s a film of pedigree and promise, the director of Rain Man, the actor who defined the modern gangster, but the result feels strangely hollow.

The premise is delicious on paper. De Niro plays both Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, real-life Mafia bosses whose rivalry shaped New York’s criminal underworld in the mid-20th century. The film charts their uneasy partnership, betrayal, and eventual collision in a world where loyalty is just another word for strategy. On that level, it should’ve been a powerhouse. Ambition, paranoia, pride, all the ingredients are there. But Levinson’s direction never finds the fire beneath the facts.

The story unfolds with the careful precision of a period drama but without the pulse of a crime epic. Everything feels correct, the suits, the cigars, the cars, the smoke curling through back rooms, but rarely does it feel alive. 

De Niro, to his credit, still commands the screen. As Costello, he’s cool, deliberate, a man of power who understands the cost of maintaining control. As Genovese, he’s rougher, hungrier, and more volatile. Yet the dual performance ends up being its biggest gimmick. You can admire De Niro’s craft, but you can’t escape the uncanny sensation of watching him act opposite himself. 

The supporting cast does what it can, though they’re given little. Characters orbit the twin titans but rarely emerge with weight or purpose. The wives and consigliere exist mostly to remind us of the human cost, but the script treats them like background noise. There’s talk, lots of it, boardroom talk, loyalty talk, betrayal talk, but precious little of what made those conversations dangerous in films like Goodfellas or The Godfather. Here, the danger feels distant.

Levinson’s direction is polished but oddly sterile. There’s no sense of menace, no unpredictability, no moral rot creeping in from the edges. It’s a film that confuses elegance with intensity.

Even the pacing feels off. The first act lingers too long on exposition, the middle drifts without momentum, and by the time we reach the supposed showdown between the two bosses, the energy has drained. The film’s final scenes aim for tragedy and gravitas but instead land with a dull thud. It’s not bad, but it has a strange fate for a film about men who lived on the edge.

There are flashes of what could have been: a Senate hearing that crackles with energy, a brief look into Costello’s fragile ego, a single shot of De Niro’s face that almost says more than the script ever dares to.

The Alto Knights is too neat, too reverent, too afraid to get its hands dirty.