The actor’s false nose is the star attraction as he plays dual roles in Bugsy and Rain Man director Barry Levinson’s baffling latest

Here’s a poser: how do you distinguish your factually based Italian-American mob drama from the numerous other, better examples of the genre? It’s a particular head-scratcher for Barry Levinson, whose lacklustre latest, The Alto Knights, about the bad blood between 1950s mafia bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, is destined to be compared to his own multi-Oscar-nominated 1991 crime picture Bugsy, in which Vito and Frank appear as supporting characters.

For this picture, Levinson hit on the bafflingly ill-advised idea of casting Robert De Niro in both of the two lead roles of Frank and Vito. Which, while it does make the picture distinctive, unfortunately doesn’t make it good. A meandering Goodfellas-style narration, growled to camera by Frank, fails to boost the film’s flagging energy, and since De Niro’s approach is to deliver two very slightly different but equally hammy performances, the whole dual-role gimmick is more distracting than interesting. Still, if you must watch it, you can at least amuse yourself by spotting the join where De Niro-as-Frank’s fake nose is glued on.

In UK and Irish cinemas