by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Robert De Niro, Cosmo Jarvis, Debra Messing, Michael Rispoli
Intro:
… carries enough of the fire of crime epics of old to still resonate.
De Niro vs. De Niro. Even with Warner Bros. doubling-down on dual casting this year, between the clone shenanigans of Mickey 17 and the upcoming Michael B. Jordan twins flick Sinners, it’s a gimmick that immediately draws attention. Doubly so by reuniting him with Nicholas Pileggi, who gave Bobby two of his best roles in Goodfellas and Casino, along with Wag the Dog director Barry Levinson.
Despite having a central premise that feels like it’s tailor-made for Taxi Driver response quotes, it thankfully runs a bit deeper than just ‘you are your own worst enemy’. Playing both sides of a New York gang war between the Lucianos’ Frank Costello and the Genovese’s Vito Genovese, De Niro manages to make the two personas distinctive. Frank as the politicking nice guy who prefers to keep his hands clean is pure Ace Rothstein, while Vito shows that he picked up a lot from working so closely with Joe Pesci – he has that characteristic hair-trigger temper and friable ego down pat. While their scenes directly opposite each other can feel a bit stiff (nature of the beast with this kind of double exposure trick), De Niro delivers on both fronts.
Pileggi’s not slouching with the material either, sticking to his conversational writing style that brings the criminal element down to a chat-over-beers level. However, where that casualness brought out the horrors of this line of work in his collabs with Scorsese, the mundanity in the atmosphere here feels like it robs the story specifics of some of their punch. Even with the ultraviolent shootings, it’s more than a little suspicious that the only time we see Vito directly lay hands on someone, he’s obscured by a bedsheet while White Heat plays elsewhere. Not exactly a head crammed into a vice, is it?
Barry Levinson and DP Dante Spinotti do well in finding interesting ways to film people talking, like a phone conversation from the perspective of a ceiling mirror. But the editing from Douglas Crise holds them back considerably, to the point of reinforcing the unfortunate ‘made-for-TV’ aesthetic that has been following Levinson’s work over the last several years (Rock the Kasbah, anyone?). Rather than straight-forward after-the-fact narration like Scorsese employed to great effect, Crise splices together docudrama-esque shots of De Niro sitting with a projector and talking on a park bench, along with archival footage both authentic and mocked-up, in a way that ends up distracting from the story rather than bolstering it. The opening sequence of the attempted assassination of Frank looks like it was cut while wrestling with a lawnmower.
But at its heart, there’s something genuinely compelling about what the film has to say about the life of a mobster. Marketing gimmicks aside, De Niro’s dual casting adds plenty to the film’s holistic view of street crime, and how both Frank and Vito’s tactics ultimately serve the same function. One keeps noses full, while the other keeps pockets full, but both keep the eyes of the powers-that-be vacant. In-between the historical titbits and the emphasis on blind luck that is a regular fixture in Pileggi’s dramatisations, it contains an indictment of the entire system, from the poisoned roots upwards, framed by a personal connection between two street kids who never found the right way to grow up.
The Alto Knights certainly feels dated, both in production craft and in storytelling style (Pileggi’s been trying to get this production off the ground since the ‘70s and it shows), but it carries enough of the fire of crime epics of old to still resonate. De Niro puts in some of his best character work in recent years, and the supporting cast aren’t far behind (Cosmo Jarvis in particular ends up creating his own fascinating narrative-within-a-narrative), all doing justice to Pileggi’s still-inviting approach to dialogue. The production values can get a bit dicey in places, but they hold up where they most needed to, making the most of this additional look into the spider’s web of NY mob activity.
