Alto Knights review: Robert De Niros new mob movie is a huge disappointment

Running time: 123 minutes.Rated R (violence and pervasive language).

In theaters.“From the team that brought you ‘Goodfellas’” is an enticing sell for anybody who loves mafia movies.Or, really, fantastic movies in general.That’s the shrewd way Warner Bros is reeling in audience members to come see “The Alto Knights,” starring Robert De Niro and written by Nicholas Pileggi, who not only penned “Goodfellas” but also Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.”But, by the end of this aimless schlep directed by Barry Levinson, those words come to have the same ring as “From the team that brought you Coke — Coke 2.” The theoretically meaty story of New York mob bosses and friends-turned-rivals Frank Costello and Vito Genovese — both played by De Niro for God knows what reason — is turned into a dense, unfocussed and confusing history lesson that rambles on and on to middling effect. The plot goes nowhere glacially.

Underdeveloped side characters are so far to the side, they’re out of frame. At least it starts out with a bang.Vito, the former head of the Luciano crime family, puts a hit on Frank, the current one, in 1957.

Frank is shot point-blank in the head in his Central Park West building’s lobby — and survives. I wish he hadn’t.Because then the rest of the tiresome movie is Frank insisting that he’s gonna get out of the business and retire to Italy to please his wife Bobbie (Debra Messing).

Then, as our eyes glaze over, he does not get out of business or retire to Italy.He does spend an entire scene talking about his dogs, if that’s what you look for in a gangster flick.Perhaps trying to match De Niro, Messing overacts.

Her eyes are always pried open as if she’s spotted a brontosaurus in “Jurassic Park.”Firebrand Vito, meanwhile, takes a new wife and conspires behind Frank’s back to reclaim his perch, which is less interesting than it sounds.Frank testifies in the 1950 Kefauver mafia hearings.

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