De Niro faces off with himself in mob movie ‘The Alto Knights'

"You're the actor!" shouts Anna Genovese at her estranged spouse, gangster Vito Genovese, in a courtroom where he’s implausibly claiming he lacks funds to support her.

- 

"The best actor in the world! Better than Clark Gable!" And we all chuckle. They probably all chuckled on set, too. Because the man playing Vito in “The Alto Knights” is none other than Robert De Niro, indeed one of the best actors in the world, revered in our time as Gable was in his.

It's a cute moment and an apt one, too, because Barry Levinson’s film, which aims but fails to channel the magic of decades-old mob movies like “Goodfellas — though penned by the same writer, Nicholas Pileggi — is all about De Niro. Actually, it’s all about De Niro And De Niro. The man plays both lead roles, feuding mobsters Genovese and Frank Costello, in a story based on real events.

Is it a gimmick? Surely. Does it work? Well, there's the entertainment value — this is De Niro, after all — and if you feel that more De Niro minutes are always better, then it follows that two roles are better than one. Others may feel it has a mob-themed "Parent Trap" vibe, less weighty than it should be given the obviously violent subject matter.