Night and the City (1992 film) De Niro's work as "more like a riff on Rupert Pupkin, the goofy talk show fan he played in Scorsese's "The King of Comedy"". Ebert and Howe both agreed, however, that Alan King's performance was fantastic. Owen Gleiberman concurred in his review, but he sided with Ebert regarding De Niro, concluding, "the actor who once seemed the heir to Brando, Clift, and, yes, Widmark — the actor who once got so far inside his roles that he just about detonated the screen — now plays characters who don't seem to have any inner life at all." David Ansen praised the
Frank Rosenthal Spilotro, on which the character Nicky Santoro (played by Joe Pesci) is based. Rosenthal is represented by the character Sam "Ace" Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro). The character of Ginger McKenna Rothstein, his wife in the film (played by Sharon Stone), is based on Geri McGee, Rosenthal's wife in real life. In an interview about the movie, Rosenthal stated that his character portrayed by Robert De Niro was quite but not fully similar to him, namely "7 on a scale of 1 to 10", and that he would neither "dispute" nor "confirm" whether Sharon Stone accurately portrayed his wife