7. The Godfather: Part III
For many people, The Godfather Part I and II
are the "great American films", depicting the rise and fall of the Corleone crime family as a none too subtle metaphor for American capitalism. They were generation spanning epics; they each won the Academy Award for best picture; and they brought together maybe the greatest cast in the history of movies -- Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, John Cazale, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo...Obviously, a third installment in the series -- continuing and even finishing the story of Al Pacino's doomed Mafia don Michael Corleone -- was going to have a lot to live up to. And it didn't. Spectacularly. Godfather III did just fine at the box office and earned seven Academy Award nominations, but with "Godfather" in the title the film was pretty much guaranteed to open well (Paramount Pictures was more or less relying on it to save the studio from bankruptcy), and those Oscar nominations had the faint whiff of "Well, we've gotta give it to 'em, it's
The Godfather, for cryin' out loud". Godfather III got mixed reviews, both for its script and --
especially -- for the controversial decision to replace last minute drop out Winona Ryder with Coppola's own daughter Sofia in the pivotal role of Michael's daughter Mary (Time's Richard Corliss wrote that Coppola's "gosling gracelessness comes close to wrecking the movie"). The movie has become almost the post child for disappointing sequels, and mention of it is often avoided when discussing the Godfather series. There's a reason Fat Tony on the Simpsons once rasped "I haven't cried this much since I paid to see Godfather III."
Which is perhaps an unfairly harsh summation, because while it doesn't reach the heights of its predecessors (what movie could?), Godfather III has its own pleasures to offer. To be fair: this is definitely an uneven film -- the production was rushed (a year from the day the decision was made to
make the film to the day it was going to be released in theaters) and it shows, with remarkable scenes and setpieces fighting for time amongst narrative ennui. Mario Puzo and Coppola were clearly kind of writing this thing as they went along; Michael Corleone's existential struggle results in a lot of very long, very talky, very stagey scenes that play like first drafts to be condensed and sharpened later. And...well, yeah, Sofia Coppola is pretty damn stiff as Mary Corleone. (Ms. Coppola has since wisely realized that her (considerable) talents lie behind the camera, not in front of it.) But mixed in with the chaff, there's a lot of fantastic stuff. On a superficial level, the helicopter attack in Atlantic City is one of the series' bloodiest and most viscerally effective sequences; and in true Godfather tradition, the final montage of assassinations is beautifully handled. More importantly, Godfather III presents an ambitious (if uneven) attempt to take the Godfather into King Lear territory, aided mightily by a great performance from Al Pacino. By the early '90s Al Pacino's general acting style had become more baroque, more extreme, more...well, "hooh-ah"-y than when he first played Michael Corleone, but Godfather Part III (along with a later underrated gangster classic, Donnie Brasco) represents a demonstration of how subtle the actor can be when he tries. Michael's voice has withered to a hoarse croak, his once smooth face become cracked and lined; there's something deeply moving about seeing this man try desperately to reconcile with his wife and put the cycle of violence behind him, and Pacino handles all the character notes so beautifully you hardly notice the clumsy writing on first viewing. His performance provides the center for an honorable and ambitious -- if flawed -- gangster epic.