We all crave power and respect. There is a huge amount of romanticizing of the mafia in media. It began in the 1930's when the first Mob films were made, the image of abberent, honourable gangster emerged. I agree that crime is crime, where the mob is concerned they may be a step up from normal criminals but there is only really a fine distinction. Every penny taken by the Mob is a penny taken out of the hands of the average hard working man.

The Godfather is a film of fine distinction. Normally, in movies, the relative moralism of the good and evil is so apparent that it's almost deafening. In the Godfather we have very fine distinctions. Honourable criminals amoung criminals and truly honourable criminals (the Corleones) amoung the honourable crimnals.

Additionally our society is built on checks and balances, allowing for a sort of power equilibrium to be maintained. In an almost dictatorial structure as you have with the Mafia, these checks and balances are replaced with a bullet and as such few people trust others in this structure. You always run the danger in a system like this for the power to be abused and it usually is abused. There also is alot of corruption. If you read any true mob stories, there is a huge element of betrayal and corruption as well as power abuse going on.

If you want to get into the issue of realtive moralism and ethics, I guess there is no absolute. At the same time however killing someone is almost universally thought of as an unacceptable thing in our society.

Also I think it's one of the underlying themes of the whole GF trilogy that two men like Michael and Vito Corleone who were so gifted and could have been politicians if they so wanted and/or could have been gifted business men, lacked the last thread of character necessary to make the transition away from criminal life.