Robert De Niro does double duty in Barry Levinson’s new film The Alto Knights, but the mob drama is already being projected to become one of the year’s biggest flops.
Warner Bros. is releasing the film, which stars De Niro as rival crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello and reportedly cost $45 million to make.
However, Variety reports that the film is expected to make back just $2-3 million when it opens at 2,800 cinemas in the US this weekend.
The film is not short of cinematic pedigree. It comes from a script by Nicholas Pileggi, the former journalist who adapted his own non-fiction books into the films Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995).
Levinson has his own gangster pedigree, having made Diner (1982) and Bugsy (1991), while the film’s cinematographer is Heat’s Dante Spinotti.
Along with the two De Niros, the cast is filled out by Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci and Michael Rispoli.
The Independent critic Clarisse Loughrey handed The Alto Knights a two-star review, writing: “The Alto Knights is built around its own take on the famous diner scene in Michael Mann’s Heat: two titans, two ends of the moral spectrum, sit across from each other in a booth, like generals engaged in a tête-à-tête in no man’s land. The twist is that, this time, both men are Robert De Niro.
“Yet that headline scene, in reality, slips by without much incident. De Niro plays both Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, key figures in New York crime history, whose friendship-turned-rivalry led Genovese to order a hit on Costello. The men were not twins, relations, or individuals famously known to bear a physical resemblance (they’re played by two different actors in flashback).
“Instead, De Niro’s doubled presence would imply a metaphorical link – the impulsive Genovese, quick to dip his toes into the risky world of narcotics, represents the Jungian shadow, the ugly desires repressed by Costello’s stoic, more honourable brand of criminal.
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“But De Niro, as mighty as he may be, can’t distinguish these two men in a way that justifies the stunt. Costello sees the actor in a mode of affable nonchalance, describing corruption and bullet-riddled bodies as if they were no less a part of working life as filing paperwork.
“Genovese, however, doesn’t come across as especially volatile. He’s the same with a squeakier voice (there’s a touch of his Goodfellas co-star Joe Pesci) and prosthetics that make it look like he’s wearing an inside-out latex mask of Robert Duvall.”
