The Alto Knights

After mob boss Vito (Robert De Niro with loads of facial prosthetics) gets into a scrape with the authorities, he has to flee the USA and leave his childhood friend and business partner Frank (Robert De Niro without augmentation) in charge of things. Many years go by and the latter makes a success of the post prohibition business, avoiding the narcotics industry and keeping the peace amongst the other families that control the boroughs of New York. Then Vito decides he wants to come home and resume his position at the top of the tree, but being quite a loose cannon finds that Frank and just ab...

<em>'The Alto Knights'</em> delivered for me. A (biographical) crime drama featuring Robert De Niro, what's not to love? It's a bio about Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, two people I'm not all that familiar with but the story is an easy one to understand and follow so it matters not.

I'm not absolutely sold on the documentary-esque scenes, though everything more traditional is excellent in my opinion. It doesn't feel like it adds anything new to the genre, much of it does feel derivative, but I'm not even hating at all because I highly enjoyed it.

De Niro is as quality as one would exp...

You guys remember how bad Gotti was? Well this is what happens when someone tries to out-do De Niro in anything. He took a breath, told Travolta to hold his beer, and sat down and showed him how bad a mob movie can really be.

Part of it is, well it's De Niro's politics. He isn't just outspoken politically, he's an outspoken cry-bully and that who cry baby attitude makes it pretty unbelievable when you're playing a mobster. And part of it goes a little deeper, The Good Shepard was his last decent flick and Matt Damon had to carry him through it.

So now we get De Niro playing two roles ...

"The Alto Knights" is a highly recommended and worthwhile film and the most surprising thing of all is how bloodless the finale is. This is a good thing since it allows the film to be rounded off in the most unorthodox way imaginable. However, even though there is plenty said about notorious New York crime bosses Frank Costello and Vito Genovese as young men very little of these early years is actually shown and the film really should have been made in the style of Francis Ford Coppola's magnificent "The Godfather" (1972), "The Godfather Part II" (1974) or Sergio Leone's marvellous "Once Upon ...