Al Pacino – Biography – IMDb

• Al Pacino on The Godfather: Part III (1990)

You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem?

Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty That's not who he is
In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them

Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward
That is not the image he has of himself

SPOILER

Michael has this code: he lives by something that makes audiences respond
But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right

I applaud [Francis Ford Coppola] for trying to get to that but Michael is so frozen in that image

There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother That was a mistake
And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on He was wrong

SPOILER