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THE FRIEND

Producers: Liza Chasin, Scott McGehee, David Siegel and Mike Spreter  Directors: Scott McGehee and David Siegel   Screenplay: Scott McGehee and David Siegel   Cast: Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Constance Wu, Noma Dumezweni, Ann Dowd, Josh Pais, Felix Solis, Owen Teague, Tom McCarthy, Juliet Brett, Gina Costigan and Bruce Norris    Distributor: Bleecker Street

Grade: B-

The writing-directing team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel have made a string of interesting if not always successful films, from “Suture” (1994) through “Montana Story” (2021), often adapting unlikely sources (like Henry James’s “What Maisie Knew”) in the process.  Their inspiration in this case is the 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez, whose 2020 book “What Are You Going Through” was recently adapted by Pedro Almodóvar as “The Room Next Door.”

Both are about end-of-life issues, and both involve suicide.  “Room” focuses on a terminally-ill woman and the old friend she enlists to help her die with dignity.  “The Friend” deals with the aftermath of an unexpected suicide, specifically the grief that follows it.  There’s also the not-so-small matter of a Great Dane left behind mourning its deceased master.

Naomi Watts stars as Iris, the friend and disciple of the dead man, Walter (Bill Murray), an author and university professor who’s gotten into professional trouble because of his womanizing habits, including entanglements with students.  Iris is a writer herself, though she’s set aside work on her novel to concentrate on editing a collection of Walter’s letters for his publisher Jerry (Josh Pais).

Now she’s shattered by Walter’s suicide and by the request from his widow Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) that she take charge of Apollo, the huge dog that her late husband had adopted after finding it abandoned during one of his jogs along the coast.  Iris reluctantly agrees, though she intends housing the animal only until she can find somewhere else for it, be it a private home or a shelter.  Doing so is important, not only because Apollo, though extraordinarily well-mannered in terms of barking, is far too large for her apartment, but because the building, as super Hektor (Felix Solis), a friendly sort but duty-bound, informs her repeatedly, does not allow dogs.  Keeping the animal could result in her eviction from the rent-controlled flat, which she inherited from her recently-deceased father—another loss she’s still processing.

Iris’s search for a place for Apollo continues as she effectively surrenders her place, including her bed, to the animal, which she finds can be destructive unless soothed—in its case, she discovers, by being read to.  In the meantime she has to deal with Jerry, whose interest in the completion of the book of Walter’s letters grows; with Walter’s two divorced ex-wives Elaine (Carla Gugino) and Tuesday (Constance Wu); with Val (Sarah Pidgeon), his grown daughter from some long-ago affair who comes as a surprise to everyone but proves helpful to Iris; and with Marjorie (Ann Dowd), a supportive neighbor who’d been close to her father but is, of course, allergic to dogs.  She also has to keep up with her university writing seminar, where the only guy in the class (Owen Teague, from “Montana Story”) complains of having to tamp down the erotic prose he reads to the class, but on learning of Apollo calls the Great Dane “the king of dogs.”

But wearing the canine crowd does not, as a vet (Bruce Norris) explains, bring longevity.  The breed has a short life expectancy, and Apollo might be nearing the end of his days.  As Iris predictably grows more and more connected emotionally with the animal—they share grief over Walter’s loss, after all—she becomes increasingly protective of it.  The dog,  played by a canine named Bing whose bearing, as lovingly shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, reflects Murray’s majestically hangdog look, is a sort of surrogate for its dead master in her eyes, and she simply can’t deal with the thought of handing it off to somewhat else.  That, of course, is a sign of her deep attachment to the dead man with whom, it’s eventually revealed, she once had a sexual encounter herself.  With the help of her therapist (Tom McCarthy) she devises a means of keeping the dog and her apartment, too.

There’s so much that’s good about “The Friend”—the performances, especially Watts’s and Murray’s (limited to only a few scenes, including an extended, and overly on-the-nose, imagined conversation toward the close) and Nuttgens’ cinematography, Kelly McGehee’s production design and Stacey Battat’s costumes, which together capture the ambience of literary, academic New York City perfectly—that its flaws are all the more regrettable.  They generally have to do with its pacing, which is frankly lethargic.  The directors and editor Isaac Hagy were perhaps too attached to their project and its thematic undercurrents to realize that the resultant film—which only a bit longer than two hours—feels much longer.  Their concluding shot, moreover, softens Nunez’s more unforgiving ending.

On the other hand, the use of music—not only the background score by Jay Wadley and Trevor Gureckis but the choice of needle drops—adds nice touches, not only in fairly obvious ways (“Everybody’s Talkin’” as Iris and Apollo navigate the city streets) but in the employment of Mozart (mostly “Die Zauberflöte”) in the early going.  It’s only a bit of a stretch to hear that as a nod to the increasingly common interpretation of Alfonso’s setting the plot of “Così fan tutte” in motion to “correct” the couples by reversing their linkages; here the implication is that Walter specified the “adoption” of Apollo by Iris as a means of not just assuaging their common grief but of filling what he saw as a void in her life, a posthumous act of friendship. 

In other words, “The Friend” is a girl-and-her-dog story, but it’s much more than that; and though it can feel ponderous at times, it’s worth putting up with the longueurs and occasional missteps to embrace its deeper subtleties.

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THE ALTO KNIGHTS

Producers: Irwin Winkler, Barry Levinson, Jason Sosnoff, Charles Winkler and David Winkler   Director: Barry Levinson   Screenplay: Nicholas Pileggi   Cast: Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Katherine Narducci, Michael Rispoli, Michael Adler, Ed Amatrudo, Joe Bacino, Anthony J. Gallo, Wallace Langham, Louis Mustillo, Frank Piccirillo, Matt Servitto, Robert Uricola, James Ciccone, Mike Seely, Belmont Cameli, Tim Livingood, Luke Stanton Eddy, Antonio Cipriano, Glenn Cunningham, James P. Harkins, Abi Van Andel and Zach Meiser   Distributor: Warner Bros.

Grade: C

There’s an old-fashioned feel to “The Alto Knights,” not just because it’s about the Mafia history of the forties and fifties (with brief detours back to earlier decades and ahead to later ones) but because the look of the picture—with a glossy, if not exactly lived-in, production design by Neil Spisak and costumes by Jeffrey Kurland, set off by Dante Spinotti’s luminous cinematography—goes to great lengths to exude period authenticity. 

The nostalgic element is further emphasized by the casting of Robert De Niro at the center of a film that fits snugly into a genre that he’s specialized in over the years to such an extent that he’s thought by many to be synonymous with it.  And he takes on not one but two leading roles as mobsters in it—Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, whose childhood friendship turned into rivalry when they struggled over control of New York’s Luciano crime family.

Some will dismiss the actor’s dual—and dueling—parts as a stunt, and to some extent, of course, they are.  But it’s a stunt that De Niro, with makeup jobs to distinguish the men, pulls off, even if neither performance is among his best.  His Genovese, in particular, verges on over-the-top; some would argue that it does.  But its extreme volatility draws the required contrast with the restrained, practically-minded Costello, from whose perspective the tale is largely told through his narration, very often in monologues delivered straight into the camera.

The contour of the story is a matter of record.  Both Costello and Genovese became members of the Luciano family as young men (Costello was older by six years), and in 1936, when Luciano was sent to prison, Genovese took over as boss.  But the following year he had to flee to Italy to avoid a murder rap, and handed over control to Costello.  When he finally returned to New York in 1945, Genovese expected to resume his old position, but things had changed, and though Costello made him an important underboss, he wasn’t satisfied.  After more than a decade of contention, Genovese plotted Costello’s assassination in 1957, but the gunman, Vincent Gigante (Cosmo Jarvis) muffed the job, and Costello survived.

He didn’t, however, identify Gigante to the cops, and rather than letting the incident ignite a mob war, he made plans to retire and turn over the position of “boss of bosses” to Genovese.  The assassination of his ally Albert Anastasia (Michael Rispoli)—recreated in quite explicit terms here—reinforced his decision, though Genovese, according to the scenario constructed by Nicholas Pileggi, doubted his sincerity.  Nonetheless he agreed to have his restored role recognized at the famous meeting of bosses from across the nation at Apalachin in upstate New York.  Pileggi follows the unproven theory that the apprehension of many of the attendees (including Genovese) by law enforcement, which led to the revelation of the Mafia as a national criminal organization, was a trap sprung by the absent Costello to undermine Genovese and Cosa Nostra as a whole.

That makes for a nifty ending even though, like some other elements of the Pileggi screenplay, it’s speculative and structured for dramatic effect.  Despite that, and a few liberties taken with chronology, however, “The Alto Knights”—named after a social club in Little Italy where the Luciano gang congregated—is generally fairly accurate from a historical perspective.  That’s the case not only with the Mafia material (including the footage given over to the investigation of organized crime by the congressional committee headed by Senator Estes Kefauver, played by Wallace Langham), but with more personal elements.  Substantial time is devoted to the relationship of Costello and his loving, understandably concerned wife Bobbie (Debra Messing), who was, controversially among the Italian hoods, Jewish, and the far more volatile one between Genovese and his wife Anna (Kathrine Narducci)—the sequence of them squabbling before their divorce judge is hardly subtle, but it’s fun.

Messing and Narducci are both fine, and the rest of the supporting cast is filled with actors who are expert at playing colorful gangster types—not only the energetic Rispoli and dim-bulb Jarvis, but James Ciccone as Carlo Gambino, Anthony J. Gallo as Tommy Lucchese, Frank Piccirillo as Richie Boiardo and especially the late Robert Uricola as Tony Bender, Vito’s elderly, put-upon underboss.  There are also nice turns by those not part of the mob—Langham, for example, or Matt Servitto as Frank’s lawyer George Wolf, or Mike Seely as the state trooper who sets off the stampede of mobsters at Apalachin.

But it’s De Niro who dominates the picture, chewing the scenery with relish as Genovese and exuding practical-minded cunning as Costello.  In a couple of scenes the two bosses sit across a table and debate with one another, and De Niro seems to be enjoying himself no end playing against himself. 

It’s a pity his deft double work isn’t situated in a better movie.  While veteran director Barry Levinson doesn’t embarrass himself the way Francis Ford Coppola did, for example, with “Megalopolis,” he fails to infuse the film with the intensity that De Niro’s old collaborator Martin Scorsese would have brought to it.  It’s not for lack of trying: he encourages Spinotti and editor Douglas Crise to jazz things up with lots of found footage, historical stills and busy, jerky montages, but that merely accentuates the ramshackle construction of Pileggi’s script, resulting in a jagged, helter-skelter vibe.  David Fleming’s score often comes on too strong, too.

“The Alto Knights” isn’t boring, and it affords the opportunity to appreciate Robert De Niro’s virtuosity as he runs the gamut of mobster characterization in his two roles.  But as a whole it’s a pale reflection of the classics of the genre he made in earlier days.