The Alto Knights

Last night I went to see The Alto Knights with my nephew.  I was very intrigued by the idea of having the same actor play the two main characters but I eventually found this gimmick to be incredibly tedious.  Frank Costello and Vito Genovese (Robert De Niro) were once childhood friends who got their start in the criminal underworld as bootleggers.  The hotheaded Genovese is forced to flee the country in order to avoid a double murder charge and this leaves the more diplomatic Costello in charge of their organization.  While World War II keeps Genovese trapped in Europe, Costello legitimizes much of their business, which makes him and members of their organization very wealthy, and he also takes an interest in politics and the charities organized by his wife Bobbie (Debra Messing).  When Genovese eventually returns, he wants to go back to business as usual and to expand into narcotics but Costello strenuously objects to this.  They each vie for control of their organization until Genovese orders an unauthorized hit on Costello, which he survives.  The rest of the narrative, which is convoluted and moves at a glacial pace, focuses on how Costello attempts to leave organized crime and retire.  This is a true story that culminates in a raid that brings organized crime to the attention of the FBI but I didn't find it very compelling.  I actually found it very confusing because there are a lot of secondary characters and they are not developed very well (one very important character is assassinated in a barber shop and I didn't know who he was or why his death had such an impact on the organization until I researched it after the movie).  Even though De Niro does a good job differentiating the two characters (it is amusing to see him play off himself several times when the two characters sit down for meetings), I found it very distracting because I always had to wait until the character spoke to determine who was who.  The best thing about this movie is the 1950s production design, especially all of the cars, but the archival footage does get a bit old.  I would only recommend this to fans of gangster movies but there are definitely better ones out there to watch instead.

Note:  My nephew told me that he could tell I was bored watching this because I kept fidgeting.