THE ALTO KNIGHTS, US, 2025. Starring Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Kathrine Narducci, Cosmo Jarvis, Michael Rispoli. Directed by Barry Levinson. 125 minutes. Rated MA (strong violence).
Around 50 years ago, worldwide audiences became powerfully aware of the mafia and its activities in the US with the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. For the next half century and more, there have been many more mafia films and organised crime dramas. Cinema audiences have been fine-tuned to responding to these films for a long time.
Which puts The Alto Knights to some disadvantage as audiences have high expectations. And, there is the De Niro connection, his first Oscar for portraying the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather II, then with Scorsese in Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman. Setting up more expectations.
Another factor is that this film has been made by Hollywood veterans, De Niro, and director Levinson, both in their 80s. Writer, Nicholas Pileggi (famous journalist for his investigations and reporting on crime in the 1950s, writer of Goodfellas and Casino) and long-time prolific producer, Irwin Winkler, both in their 90s. This is a film in retrospect, of interest to audiences who have focused on mafia films, perhaps not striking enough for audiences who have seen most of it before.
The casting director has obviously made great attempts to give the look of authenticity with so many of the supporting cast playing gangsters having Italian names.
One of the great attractions for this film is that De Niro plays the two mafia chiefs of the 1940s and 1950s, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. And, while he shows that they have a great deal in common, their childhood friendship in the club The Alto Knights, they also fell out and there are considerable differences. Costello, generally calm and calculating, Genovese more of a psychopath.
In some ways, this film is a vindication of Costello and the condemnation of Genovese. It is narrated by Costello, a quiet mastermind in organising rackets, starting with bootlegging during Prohibition, building up a network, and establishing a facade of respectability, aided by his devoted wife of almost 40 years, played strikingly and unexpectedly by Messing.
The main action of the film takes place in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Genovese returns from years in Sicily after fleeing murder charges in the US, determined to be the boss, eventually putting a contract on Costello which fails, and a climax with the drama of the meeting of all the mafia chiefs at an Appalachian rendezvous. Costello masterminding again, the police swoop, and mafia chiefs are sent to jail, including Genovese who died there.
A subdued postscript as Costello retires with his wife, cultivating roses, winning a competition, quietly complacent as he dies with his criminal life achievement.
Universal
Released 20 March