Matthew d’Ancona’s culture: The Alto Knights is Robert De Niro’s victory lap

Yet it also bristles with references, allusions and homage to movies ranging from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995) and The Irishman (2019); via Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Michael Mann’s Heat (1995); to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy (1972-1990).

Beyond the theme of organised crime, what unites these American classics is that Robert De Niro appears in them all. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine the modern genre without him – and it is in this very specific context that The Alto Knights is best appreciated. To add to the cinematic intertextuality, the screenplay is the work of Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote Goodfellas and Casino with Scorsese.

As if to dramatise De Niro’s unmatched dominance, he plays both leading roles. In one corner, there is Costello, the “Prime Minister of the Underworld”, an urbane self-styled “professional gambler” who is happy to be caricatured as a figure from the pages of Damon Runyon but prefers to run his crime family with minimal fuss and a smooth public image. In the other twitches the hot-headed, pitiless Genovese, resentful, after years in exile in Italy, that his former friend is keeping him down and has betrayed his street origins.

When Costello narrowly escapes assassination in 1957, he makes a number of strategic decisions that, he hopes, will allow him to retire from his role as the capo di tutti capi and live out his remaining years quietly with his beloved wife Bobbie (Debra Messing). Appearing before the special commission on organised crime chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver (Wallace Langham), he refuses to take the fifth – to Genovese’s incandescent fury.

Twice, the two De Niros have a “sit” to hammer out their differences: at a downtown candy store and then at the Waldorf Astoria. The scenes have inevitably been compared to the legendary diner encounter between Al Pacino and De Niro in Heat. More accurately, the two moments of direct dialogue represent the bifurcation of the gangster soul: on the one hand, the irrepressible urge towards ever greater violence and power; and, on the other, the exhausted yearning to escape a life in which every day may be your last.

Like Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Costello thinks  that narcotics invite trouble. Like James Caan’s Sonny (Vito’s ill-fated eldest son), Genovese cannot see how the mafia can stay out of this lucrative trade. Like Ace Rothstein, the character De Niro played in Casino, Costello wants an orderly business (there is even a nod to Ace’s final line). Like Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), Genovese positively relishes the life of brutal violence that delivers him authority, excitement and wealth. 

In this dramatic tension pulses the mythic dilemma faced by the American movie gangster (“Just when I thought I was out – they pull me back in!”). The Alto Knights is a fond and textured summation of that traditional tale, a pleasing encapsulation of five decades of cinematic culture – and a victory lap by the 81-year-old colossus of the screen who defined that era. Many earnest critics have already turned their noses up at the movie, quibbling into their notepads. But then – what do you expect from the pezzonovante?

STREAMING

The Residence
(Netflix)

When the body of chief usher AB Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) is found in the White House, a state dinner, hosted by President Perry Morgan (Paul Fitzgerald) for the Australian prime minister, descends into mayhem. 

Enter consulting detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba, tremendous), an obsessive ornithologist who also solves crimes, and is summoned by Chief of Police Larry Dokes (Isiah Whitlock Jr) to crack the case. There are 132 rooms, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, eight staircases and three elevators to check out, not to mention 157 murder suspects (including, playing herself, Kylie Minogue).

Around Cordelia, calm, arch, always on the look-out for a rare bird in the White House grounds, buzzes a manic ensemble of politicos, guests, staff and members of the presidential family. There’s social secretary Lilly Schumacher (Molly Griggs), plotting with first gentleman Elliott Morgan (Barrett Foa) to make the White House a funky New Age venue. Jason Lee is great as the president’s brother Tripp, a boozy mess of a man, who is more or less a prisoner in the residence to minimise the political damage he can cause. Dan Perrault is secret service agent Colin Trask, so nervous that he plays podcasts about bread making in his earpiece to dampen his stress levels.

Very loosely inspired by Kate Andersen Brower’s non-fiction book The Residence: Inside the Private World of The White House (2015), Shonda Rhimes’s latest production is a richly comic whodunnit that keeps the viewer intrigued until the eighth and final episode.

THEATRE

Prima Facie
(January 27 – March 21, 2026)

As premature as it may seem to flag up this touring revival, which will take in Dublin, Edinburgh, Cardiff, York, Bath, Canterbury, Birmingham and Liverpool, the tickets are bound to be snapped up quickly. Jodie Comer’s performance as lawyer Tessa Ensler in Suzie Miller’s extraordinary play is on a par with Mark Rylance’s as Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem: one for the ages, an unforgettable experience.

Tessa is a defence barrister who loves the theatricality of the courtroom and what she calls “the game of law”. But when she is raped by a colleague, she finds herself at the mercy of the very justice system she once adored. 

As she tells the court, she knows all about finding flaws in a testimony: “But this is not a car accident, a home invasion, this is rape. A crime against the person. And now I know that when a woman says “no”, when her actions say “no”, it is not a subtle, unreadable thing at all”.

A prodigious solo performance, enhanced by a soundtrack written by Self-Esteem. If you possibly can, go see.

RADIO

Waiting for Waiting for Godot
(BBC Sounds)

It is the eve of full lockdown five years ago, and an unnamed Manchester theatre is shuttering its production of Waiting for Godot after a six-week run. Two actors – played by Adrian Edmondson and Kiell Smith-Bynoe – wait for a producer to clarify the situation. 

Edmondson, who wrote this ingenious radio drama, has long been fascinated by Samuel Beckett’s play and was Estragon to Rik Mayall’s Vladimir in a 1991 West End production. Here, his character takes a different view: “Nothing could be worse than the bloody play. Impenetrable”.Yet the predicament of the two actors so clearly mirrors the fractious limbo described by Beckett. Smith-Bynoe absent-mindedly repeats a line spoken by Vladimir (“And I resumed the struggle”), as the partition between stage and life becomes ever more porous. Simon Callow and Christopher Ryan (who appeared alongside Edmondson in The Young Ones) also feature. A funny, intelligent rendering of a very strange time indeed.

BOOK

Abundance: How We Build a Better Future – Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
(Profile Books)

The authors are a formidable duo: Ezra Klein is a star columnist and podcaster at the New York Times, while Derek Thompson is one of the Atlantic’s finest essayists.

Their core argument is that we are at a fork in the road and must choose between the politics of scarcity and the politics of abundance. Scarcity and rationing suit the populist Right, which directs hate at those groups allegedly swallowing up housing, jobs, school places and medical appointments. 

But liberals have conspired in this, say Klein and Thompson, by overseeing a form of governance characterised by “sluggishness and process”. They are “symbolically liberal but operationally conservative”, displaying virtuous lawn signs while organising against efforts to add new homes in their communities.In clean energy, housing, medicine and technology, they seek a liberalism “that builds…We aspire to more than parceling out the present”.

At a time of global realignment and uncertainty, they offer a bracingly bold basis for a progressive politics and policy that is both radical and realistic. One of the most important political books I have read in the past decade – and you can hear TNE founder and editor-in-chief Matt Kelly and I discuss it on the episode of The Two Matts posted on Thursday, March 20.