In The Alto Knights, director Barry Levinson and his stars, Robert De Niro (as Frank Costello) and Robert De Niro (as Vito Genovese), trace the rise and fall of the real-life postwar Mafia with the speed, humor, and panache that director Raoul Walsh and his stars, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, brought to the rise and fall of fictional pre-war gangsters in The Roaring Twenties (1939).
Once again, close allies end up at homicidal loggerheads. DeNiro’s Frank Costello, like Cagney’s Eddie Bartlett, wants to establish himself as a legitimate man of means, while DeNiro’s Vito Genovese, like Bogart’s George Hally, remains a ruthless street guy. Mayhem ensues.
