When two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro agreed to play Frank Costello, the diplomatic mob boss at the center of the new film "The Alto Knights," there was another crucial question left to answer: Who would play Costello's childhood friend turned enemy, mobster Vito Genovese?

In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro famously asked his reflection, “You talkin’ to me?”, and in The Alto Knights, he is, playing two separate mob bosses who repeatedly engage in gimmicky whatsamaddawitchoo-grade chitchat.

Martin Scorsese’s rueful, poignant 2019 film “The Irishman,” starring longtime collaborator Robert De Niro, was a reflection on (or perhaps even a eulogy for) the kind of gangster film that the pair made famous,