Robert De Niro’s new mob film is a big disappointment

“From the team that brought you ‘Goodfellas’” is an attractive promote for anyone who loves mafia motion pictures. Or, actually, unbelievable motion pictures on the whole.

That’s the shrewd approach Warner Bros is reeling in viewers members to return see “The Alto Knights,” starring Robert De Niro and written by Nicholas Pileggi, who not solely penned “Goodfellas” but in addition Martin Scorsese’s “Casino.”

However, by the tip of this aimless schlep directed by Barry Levinson, these phrases come to have the identical 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 — each performed by De Niro for God is aware of what purpose — is changed into a dense, unfocussed and complicated historical past lesson that rambles on and on to middling impact.

The plot goes nowhere glacially. Underdeveloped aspect characters are up to now to the aspect, they’re out of body.

At the least it begins out with a bang. Vito, the previous head of the Luciano crime household, places a success on Frank, the present one, in 1957. Frank is shot point-blank within the head in his Central Park West constructing’s foyer — and survives.

I want he hadn’t. As a result of then the remainder of the tiresome film is Frank insisting that he’s gonna get out of the enterprise and retire to Italy to please his spouse Bobbie (Debra Messing). Then, as our eyes glaze over, he doesn’t get out of enterprise or retire to Italy. He does spend a whole scene speaking about his canines, if that’s what you search for in a gangster flick.

Maybe attempting to match De Niro, Messing overacts. Her eyes are all the time pried open as if she’s noticed a brontosaurus in “Jurassic Park.”

Firebrand Vito, in the meantime, takes a brand new spouse and conspires behind Frank’s again to reclaim his perch, which is much less attention-grabbing than it sounds. Frank testifies within the 1950 Kefauver mafia hearings. Additionally laborious. Welcome to The Plod-father.

A Manhattan mafioso energy wrestle ought to drip with drama. Folks obsess over that lore. Vacationers flock to eating places the place wiseguys have been offed. However the frenemies’ animosity is poorly defined throughout a novel’s price of nostalgic narrations from Frank that the viewer tunes out. It’s an excessive amount of info.

And precise occasions — whackings, meals in again cubicles, events on the Copa — don’t matter a lot to what occurs subsequent.

You’d assume De Niro’s wacko double act would pump some gasoline into this empty tank. And, look, he pulls off the experiment, even when it pales subsequent to his biggest work. He offers Vito a high-pitched voice and spiky persona, whereas Frank is De Niro classico.

However the twofer is a purposeless gimmick all the identical. At no level can we ever overlook the Oscar winner is taking part in each leads — an insurmountable impediment to suspending our disbelief. This isn’t a severe film.

“Alto Knights” is definitely greatest when it’s humorous, significantly in moments with Vito. The oddball is a hoot as he rails about Mormonism and tries to persuade the press he’s only a common Joe Schmo by cooking them Sunday gravy within the burbs. Nevertheless, the film’s purpose is to not be the subsequent “Analyze This.”

Or “The Irishman.” At simply over two hours, it’s comparatively brief for the style. Regardless, the expertise is infinite. A head-scratcher selection that does the tempo no favors is to finish scenes on sluggish fades to black — virtually sedating the viewers.

Maybe, although, that’s a spot-on transfer for a movie that’s one massive sluggish fade to black.