The Alto Knights is built around its own take on the famous diner scene in Michael Mann’s Heat: two titans, two ends of the moral spectrum, sit across from each other in a booth, like generals engaged in a tête-à-tête in no man’s land. The twist is that, this time, both men are Robert De Niro.
Here’s a project that, on paper, is made to lure a certain kind of cinephile into a state of ecstasy. The actor, in dual roles, works off a script by Nicholas Pileggi, the former journalist who adapted his own non-fiction books into the films Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995). It may not be Martin Scorsese behind the camera this time, but director Barry Levinson has his own pedigree, having made the likes of Diner (1982) and Bugsy (1991). The film’s cinematographer, conveniently, is Heat’s own Dante Spinotti.
