10 Flawed Elements In Otherwise Flawless Films

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather is the godfather of crime movies. It helped redefine cinema for good in the 1970s and transitioned gangster movies away from wisecracks, molls and tommy guns, and into heavier, darker, more dramatic territory, where the souls of the mobsters matter as much as the money they have in the bank.

Marlon Brando is almost unrecognisable as Don Corleone, and the rest of the cast is stuffed with future greats, all working in harmony to deliver a piece of period filmmaking that rose far above its predecessors and competitors, and made Coppola one of the titans of the American New Wave. But there is still one flawed scene that even the most forgiving critics still cringe at today: godfather-in-waiting Sonny Corleone's fight.

Despite James Caan (Sonny) reportedly breaking Gianni Russo's (Carlo) ribs during the scene when Sonny seeks to avenge his sister in a street beating, most of the junior godfather's blows don't land. Due to some surprisingly tactless camera placement from Coppola, and an apparent unwillingness to do a second take, we see it all. Such a conspicuous fracturing of the film's fiction is not just unfortunate but scarring in an otherwise flawless production, and given how much he has fiddled with Part III, would it hurt Coppola to go back and edit this out?