For those of you who hate Part III...

Originally posted by DeathByClotheshanger:
How many times have you watched it? Entirely? I mean actually sat down and watched it from beginning to end without letting the nagging flaws get in the way?...

Originally posted by Beth E:

The only positive.....bang, bang,.. "DADDY"!!! Mary's dead. Goodbye, Sophia.

Originally posted by Don Cardi:
They should have killed her off about 1/4 way through the movie to spare us the torture of enduring her horrible acting.


Don Cardi

Originally posted by olivant:
Now, what is all this carping about Sophia's acting? She was young at the time and she played a 19 year old girl in the movie. Now, how in the world does a 19 year old girl act and react?

Originally posted by DeathByClotheshanger:
How many times have you watched it? Entirely? I mean actually sat down and watched it from beginning to end without letting the nagging flaws get in the way?

Originally posted by olivant:
Now, how in the world does a 19 year old girl act and react? To address one particluar scene, if you were shot in the chest, how in the world do you think you would act or react? With death engulfing you, what would be your last verbal expression? What would be the look on your face? Sophia did just fine. She played a loving and young woman who was trying to sort through the conflicts of her emerging womanhood and relationship with her parents and she portrayed her character quite well.

Originally posted by Moscarelli:
...It is The Godfather we all fell in love with.

Originally posted by Moscarelli:
... can you be an absolutely true fan if you hate part of the trilogy so very much? Hmmm...

Originally posted by olivant:
...Sometimes I think that some people criticize GFIII not so much because of its plot liberties or its acting, but because it reminds them of what they may have done, sins they may have committed. It makes them realize that they can't take it back just like Mike realized the same thing. It makes them realize that there are no do overs. For many, GFIII was a reflection in their mirror.

Originally posted by olivant:
Sometimes I think that some people criticize GFIII not so much because of its plot liberties or its acting, but because it reminds them of what they may have done, sins they may have committed. It makes them realize that they can't take it back just like Mike realized the same thing. It makes them realize that there are no do overs. For many, GFIII was a reflection in their mirror.

Originally posted by DeathByClotheshanger:
...I think people don't like Part III for primarily one reason and that is -- it's too modern...

I suspect those who actually try to defend this film only feel compelled to do so because FC, Pacino and Puzo were involved in its making. If it was an identical film directed and written by someone else (but still without Duval and with Sofia Coppola), I have no doubt that literally almost everyone would have been listing it as one of the "worst sequels of all time", next to such antifavorites as "Highlander II" or "Batman and Robin"...

Cast & Credits
Michael Corleone: Al Pacino
Kay: Diane Keaton
Connie: Talia Shire
Vincent Mancini: Andy Garcia
Mary Corleone: Sofia Coppola
Don Altobello: Eli Wallach
Joey Zasa: Joe Mantegna

Paramount Pictures Presents A Film Produced And Directed By Francis Ford Coppola. Photographed By Gordon Willis. Written By Mario Puzo And Francis Ford Coppola. Edited By Barry Malkin, Lisa Fruchtman And Walter Murch. Original Music By Carmine Coppola. Running Time: 162 Minutes. Classified R.

"The Godfather, Part III" continues the Corleone family history in 1979, as the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. Despite every attempt to go legit, to become respectable, the past cannot be silenced. The family has amassed unimaginable wealth, and as the film opens Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is being invested with a great honor by the church. Later that day, at a reception, his daughter announces a Corleone family gift to the church and the charities of Sicily, "a check in the amount of $100 million." But the Corleones are about to find, as others have throughout history, that you cannot buy forgiveness. Sure, you can do business with evil men inside the church, for all men are fallible and capable of sin. But God does not take payoffs.

Michael is older now and walks with a stoop. He has a diabetic condition. He has spent the years since "The Godfather, Part II" trying to move the family out of crime and into legitimate businesses. He has turned over a lot of the old family rackets to a new generation, to people like Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), who is not scrupulous about dealing dope, who is capable of making deals that would offend the fastidious Michael. It is Michael's dream, now that he senses his life is coming to a close, that he can move his family into the light.

But the past is seductive. Because Michael knows how to run a Mafia family, there is great pressure on him to do so. And throughout "Godfather III" we are aware of the essential tragedy of this man, the fact that the sins that stain his soul will not wash off - especially the sin of having ordered the death of his brother Fredo.

Michael is positioned in the story between two characters who could come from "King Lear" - his daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola), whom he loves and wants to give his kingdom to, and Sonny's son, Vincent (Andy Garcia), who sees the death of his enemies as the answer to every question. Michael is torn between the futures represented by the two characters, between Mary, quiet and naive, and the hot-blooded Vincent. And when Vincent seduces Mary and makes her his own, Michael's plans begin to go wrong.

There is also Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton), of course, still the woman Michael loves, and the mother of his children. He wants their son, Anthony, to join the family business. She defends his ambition to be an opera singer. They face each other like skilled opponents.

Perhaps she even still loves him, too, or would if she did not know him so well. She is the only person who can tell Michael what she really thinks, and in one of those dark, gloomy rooms, she lets him know that it doesn't matter what grand order he is invested in by the church, he is at heart still a gangster. The best scenes in "Godfather III" are between these two, Michael and Kay, Pacino and Keaton, fiercely locked in a battle that began too many years ago, at that wedding feast where Michael told Kay he was not part of his family business.

The plot of the movie, concocted by Coppola and Mario Puzo in a screenplay inspired by headlines, brings the Corleone family into the inner circles of corruption in the Vatican. Actual events - the untimely suddenness of John Paul I's death, the scandals at the Vatican Bank, the body of a Vatican banker found hanging from a London bridge - are cheerfully intertwined with the Corleone's fictional story, and it is suggested that the Vatican lost hundreds of millions in a fraud. We eavesdrop on corrupt Vatican officials, venal cardinals scheming in the vast Renaissance palaces that dwarf them, and we travel to Sicily so that Michael Corleone can consult with Don Tommasino, his trusted old friend, to discover who is plotting against him within the Mafia council.

They are so seductive, these byzantine intrigues. Alliances are forged with a pragmatic decision, betrayed with sudden violence.

Always there is someone in a corner, whispering even more devious advice. This trait of operatic plotting and betrayal is practiced beautifully by Connie Corleone (Talia Shire), Michael's sister, who has turned in middle age into a fierce, thin-faced woman in black, who stands in the deepest shadows, who schemes and lobbies for her favorites - especially for Vincent, whom she wants Michael to accept and embrace.

In the "Godfather" movies Coppola has made a world. Because we know it so intimately, because its rhythms and values are instantly recognizable to us, a film like "The Godfather Part III" probably works better than it should. If you stand back and look at it rationally, this is a confusing and disjointed film. It is said that Coppola was rewriting it as he went along, and indeed it lacks the confident forward sweep of a film that knows where it's going.

Some of the dialogue scenes, especially in the beginning, sound vaguely awkward; the answers do not fit the questions, and conversations seem to have been rewritten in the editing room. Other shots - long shots, into the light, so we cannot see the characters' lips -- look suspiciously like scenes that were filmed first and dubbed later. The whole ambitious final movement of the film - in which two separate intrigues are intercut with the progress of an opera being sung by Anthony -- is intended to be suspenseful but is so confusing, we are not even sure which place (Sicily, Rome, London?) one of the intrigues is occurring. The final scene of the movie, which is intended to echo Marlon Brando's famous death scene, is perfunctory and awkward.

And yet it's strange how the earlier movies fill in the gaps left by this one, and answer the questions. It is, I suspect, not even possible to understand this film without knowing the first two, and yet, knowing them, "Part III" works better than it should, evokes the same sense of wasted greatness, of misdirected genius. Both Don Vito Corleone and Don Michael Corleone could have been great men. But they lacked that final shred of character that would have allowed them to break free from their own pasts. Or perhaps their tragedies were dictated by circumstances. Perhaps they were simply born into the wrong family.

And so here we are back again, in the rich, deep brown rooms inhabited by the Corleone family, the rooms filled with shadows and memories, and regretful decisions that people may have to die. We have been taught this world so well by Francis Ford Coppola that we enter it effortlessly has there ever before been a film saga so seductive and compelling, so familiar to us that even after years we remember all of the names of the players? Here, for example, is a new character, introduced as "Sonny's illegitimate son," and, yes, we nod like cousins at a family reunion, yes, he does seem a lot like Sonny.

He's the same kind of hotheaded, trigger-happy lunatic.

Originally posted by Sammy the Bull:
I suspect those who actually try to defend this film only feel compelled to do so because FC, Pacino and Puzo were involved in its making. If it was an identical film directed and written by someone else (but still without Duval and with Sofia Coppola), I have no doubt that literally almost everyone would have been listing it as one of the "worst sequels of all time"

Originally posted by Sicilian Babe:
If FFC had cast someone else as Mary and eliminated the whole incest plotline, I wonder if we would have the same negative feelings toward the film.

Originally posted by Sicilian Babe:
Perhaps a better actress could have made that plotline work, but I guess we'll never know.

Originally posted by DeathByClotheshanger:
Maybe it's the music.

Originally posted by dontomasso:

Knowing that he had to protect Michael from an assassination attempt, and knowing that "everyone" had to get themselves into their car and get out of there and go back to the Villa, ......

Originally posted by svsg:
... I would have loved to watch Duvall in GF3, but his absence didn't affect the movie so much I think ...

Originally posted by flucko: ...it is quite a loss that Hagen wasn't in the script because Duvall wasn't interested.

Originally posted by Signor Vitelli:
A pity, IMHO, because I feel the film truly suffered for not having the character of Tom Hagen in it. George Hamilton was a poor substitute.

Originally posted by Don Andrew:
Sorry son, but a few good nuggets don't make a chicken tender. If the first two were anything, they were two beautiful whole chickens. While GF III is a flawed film in many ways, it was still an ok film. Not that good, not terrible, but not on caliber with the first two masterpieces. A two-star effort IMO.

Originally posted by AppleOnYa:
I never got the feeling of Michael being 'troubled' at the end of GFII. Seems to me he was more consumed with this 'protecting the family' thing...even to the point of being almost devoid of a soul. In that final closeup he most certainly does seem tragic to me.

I would say that in GFIII he was far more troubled by the past (hence his weepy confession about Fredo) .... or HAD been troubled in the years between the two films.

I can completely understand the need for a GFIII...there were many (including me) who wanted to know how the rest of Michael's life might unfold after that loneliness depicted at the end of GFII. I just wish it had been done better...and always will.

Apple

I am not a Godfather III hater. In fact, I hardly can consider the movie any worse then the previous two. And, here's why...

For one thing, I don't consider The Godfather III to be, just the third installment. In Coppola's commentary for the film, he mentions that he tried his hardest to convince the studio to have it be named The Death of Michael Corleone. You see, it wasn't part three, it was the end, the last page. For example, say your building a a tall tower. Now, each block may be different but simmilar in so many other ways, whereas, the roof, the cap, is always much more unusual. This was simply a way to give us closure, not the story of the Corleones neccesarily. And I believe it did just that.

Also, what the hell is so horrible with Sophia Coppola's acting? I'll admit, not Oscar worthy, but, come one, you guys beat up on her too much. I mean, she played it all perfectly fine, definately believable. I mean, I've seen far worse acting, this is hardly considered to be horrible, or even bad.

Now, granted, the third movie is complicated. But, so was the second installment. I mean, it took me just as many viewings to understand The Godfather II as it did The Godfather III. I think the problem is simply that it wasn't as exciting, and it wasn't the same Michael. It was not a subject that many would find interesting. But I see it as, hey, this is where Michael is, whether I fancied it all or not. I was interested in Michael and his family. Indeed, they all changed quite a bit, but it had been a couple decades, and is change in character not inevitable?

The only thing I didn't like, was the fact that Vincent was made up entirely. But, you must remember, the book and the movie are both two different things. The movie was based on the novel, it wasn't the novel with moving pictures. I mean, when Vito dies, in the book, Michael is there to say goodbye, in the movie, his grandson is there to watch him die. In the second installment, when Vito's mother is killed, it is in a different way then in the book. The two worlds are different, and as much as I would have rather seen the movie more congruent to the novel, I did like the fact of Sonny's bastard son showing up.

So, there, thats all I have to say. Feel free to critisize, disagree, what have you. But, let me end with this. It is The Godfather we all fell in love with. And I see it like this, can you be an absolutely true fan if you hate part of the trilogy so very much? Hmmm...

Come on, Sofia grows on you.

So does a fungus.

So does Gnocchi.