Robert De Niro plays double roles in this silent drama

In 1995, Michael Man “Heat” Cinephiles gave confrontations for ages: In the end, legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will participate in the epic crime movie. Now, in 2025, we have a new criminal movie that made Robert De Niro face to face with … Robert De Niro. This is not a bad idea: Despite a series of doubtful roles in the last half of his famous long career, De niro is still one of our best actors, and has turned into some modern shows – specifically his work in Martin Scorsese “Irish” and “Venus Qamar” – This proves that he still gets it.

With “The Alto Knights” by Bari Levinson, De Niro pulled a dual duty, and played realistic gangs who grew up as friends before they became bitter enemies. There is a lot of space for the pleasure of potential mob movies here, however, Levinson is so life that it cannot rise to this occasion. De Niro, who is buried in an unconvincing makeup that makes him look like an evil ghoul from Warren Betty “Dick Trissy”, “ He tries his best to create something of his double roles, but an approach made him play two different people never rises more than just a way to circumvent. What could have been an interesting experience in the end of the end.

Films about the mafia and gang gangs have been with us since the dawn of the film, and one of the joint criticisms of these pieces of pop entertainment is that they glorify the criminal lifestyle (this is the repeated charge that was beaten in many Scorsese films that also occur to facing De Niro). So I will say one thing about “The Alto Knights”: Here is the Mob movie that makes the mob life completely look boring. There is no glorification here – instead, there numerous The scenes in which a DE Niro characters in his living room watches TV instead of picking a pistol. According to “The Alto Knights”, the presence in the mafia is an exciting thing as Sunday afternoon.

With the start of “The Alto Knights”, it is in 1957, and Frank Costilo (De Niro) affects a gunman in the hall of his apartment building. Frank survived with only slight injuries, and he was known immediately who asked to try the strike: his old friend Vito Ginoviz (also De Niro). Through the memories of the past with the narration presented by Frank, we learned that Frank and Vito came to the mob together. Veto eventually rose in rows to become a president, but he eventually escaped to Italy to overcome the cover of the killing. Before leaving Veto, Frank left the official.

After years of living in exile, Veto returns and wants to return his empire. Frank urges caution and patience, and thus the rift begins to form between these two previous friends. Men are a full opposite: Frank is a type of quiet and boring man who is going through anonymous criminal activities – as anyone who knows the history of mob can tell you, the FBI director J To the outside world, Frank is simply a businessman and a “professional gambler”.

Veto, in contrast to the sharp, is gently a hutch. It is evacuated and violent, vulnerable to knives to death without hesitation. Vito himself admits the differences between the two men: he says that Frank is “reasonable” from the spouses. The stark differences between the two DE niro give a lot to work with it: he plays Frank as calm, almost as a calm, and Vito is depicted as vulgar and inconceivation (also raises his voice when Vito is playing to distinguish the two men better).

As a fan for a long time De NiroI will admit that I was hoping for a kind of magic acting here. As I said above, I think de Niro still has goods – when he works with the right material. Unfortunately, “The Alto Knights” is not the correct material, although it has some talented people who work in front of the camera and behind it. In addition to De niro, part of the members of the “Sopranos” actors team appears, while the movie’s scenario from Nicholas Billegi, the crime writer who formulated the book that inspired “Goodflas”.

Perhaps the weak spot is Levinson. The director has been involved in the Mob Movie type before – it has led the “Bugsy” which is unforgettable – but Levinson has led very preserved, as it was very silent for this type of things. It might be a very clear choice, but you can only think that if a Scorsese’s reunion is collected with Pileggi and De niro for this movie, it may be a special thing.

While De Niro tries his best, the double pouring pulp is constantly distracted. Despite the differences of her personality, there is no one moment where we buy two different players. Facial makeup and sound change aside, it is always clear that we are seeing de Niro sitting in a restaurant booth with De Niro.

There are sometimes glimpses of something more interesting throughout the “The Alto Knights”. At one point, the romantic Vito Anna (Catherine Narduchi) begins, a woman running a lesbian nightclub. The two marry, and quickly begins to steal money from Anna, and takes it to the court – which leads to the spread of wealth of information about the mafia in this process. In fact, the best watching a full movie about it Which – which: The owner of a lesbian nightclub who left the mafia in the divorce court. This looks like an interesting story type that has not been listed on the screen before. However, “The Alto Knights” is transmitted as a quick and entertaining story that is almost immediately forgotten in order to return to bad blood between Frank and Vito.

There is also a hidden line as Vito indicates that Frank is starting to grow as soon as Frank married his wife, Debra Mitch. In fact, the film indicates that Frank prefers that Frank prefers to accommodate his livelihood room as he watches television with his wife and his entirety instead of spending time in the club with the boys. The next romance between Broom two Kilipins mafia also It looks like an elegant idea of ​​a movie, but again, “The Alto Knights” treats this information as a brief background, then moves.

I assume that there is something comfortable and comfortable about “The Alto Knights”-it’s the type of my sleeper, which can be easily seen from an arms chair through a half-closed eyelids in the afternoon rainy. The type of film calls your father, then says, “He was fine” after you asked him how it was. In other words, there is nothing bad in “The Alto Knights” … but you wanted it, because at least he has made the movie more interesting.

/Film classification: 5 out of 10

“Al Fursan Alto” opens in theaters on March 21, 2025.