The Alto Knights

It’s always fascinating to see an actor pulling a dual role in a film.

That intrigue certainly seems to be the main advertising push for The Alto Knights, a fascinating true story about the early days of the Mafia.

That in itself, and the influence these individuals had on The Godfather etc., is hugely interesting but, from its title on down, it is an easy film to admire but a hard one to truly love and understand.

Switching from the original title (Wise Guys) feels a bit of a mistake and it’s possibly worth a bit of background reading on the events before going to see the film.

Whilst the story here is fascinating and full of intrigue, it’s a lot to get through and the minutiae and the detail is lacking a little.

The politics involved and the 'behind the scenes' deal making isn’t quite explained but that’s a trap that a few of the ‘based on a true story’ gangster films fall into.

It’s easy enough to follow but doesn’t quite scale the heights of some of its fellows of the genre, many of which are film titans of course.

And a titan amongst titans is the great Robert De Niro who, as aforementioned, is in the dual role here as both sides of the ‘friends to enemies’ divide: Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

De Niro is masterful and imbues both roles with distinction. The Vito role seems to owe a fair amount to his old sparring partner Joe Pesci and he imbues Frank with a more levelled, dignified performance.

You could feasibly ask the question of quite why they needed him in both parts. It’s far too harsh to say that the film is not interesting without that element but it is a poser when it isn’t as essential as, for example, Tom Hardy playing both of the Krays.

It’s a film with a few too many of those questions. It perhaps could be, and maybe was at one stage, a tiny bit longer. The frequent (and rather frustrating) fades to black to end scenes perhaps indicative of elements that were cut.

It’s a shame as The Alto Knights is stylish, rather beautiful in large parts and imbued with great performances.

However, there’s too many confusing elements from the title (a club that the protagonists frequented in their youth which doesn’t really play much of a part), to the detail in the plot.

Not quite a Don of the genre but a worthy member of the gang.

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