Certainly overrated but still a great film

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2013)

This film is often regarded as perfect including the acting which is renowned as some of the best in the history of cinema. However I was quite underwhelmed by the performances except for Marlon Brando who is truly captivating whenever he is on screen (which is surprisingly not that often considering he won best LEAD actor for his performance.) Even Al Pacino's performance is both emotionless and forgettable in my opinion. I'm not going to waste time talking about everything that makes this film good because everyone has done that. What I am going to do is just mention some of the reasons why, overall, I was disappointed in the film. My first problem with the film is that I often found the story stretched thin by too many characters and occasionally found myself confused by the many unfamiliar Italian names that kept popping up. The first two hours of the film are exceptionally entertaining, well made and expertly written. However it is around the two hour mark where what was making the story so captivating is almost completely resolved and we are then forced to sit through another hour of a film that is no longer all that interesting. The three hour run time of the film is certainly unnecessary as even though seeing Michael take over the reigns of the family and watching Vito die is still great stuff it feels like it could have been covered in 15 minutes instead of adding another hour to a film that felt like it had already ended. I do understand that my opinion will not be popular but I felt that I should mention my problems with the film and stop some people being brainwashed by its 9.2 IMDb rating and then instantly saying that its a masterpiece so they could be accepted even though they may have found parts of it boring. I don't know... Perhaps my expectations were too high.