Showy and shallow

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2009)

Take a gangster film, dip it in sepia tones, wrap it in Nino Rota's elegiac score, add soap and sentiment, and you've got The Godfather, the "Gone with the Wind" of gangster films. And like GWTW, The Godfather represents old-style Hollywood film-making at its most popular, but it's no masterpiece, and Goodfellas and The Sopranos make it seem almost antiquated. Coppola's direction attempts to be sweeping, but the script and the characters are shallow and predictable. Scaled to be epic, the film is slow moving and talky with several characters and sequences that feel dispensable. The film doesn't really deepen or build excitement as it progresses, and despite all the talk about family, the members of the Corleone family are essentially stock characters. Pacino, Shire, Cazales, and Caan don't bond as a family, the patriarch is not a commanding or even likable figure who would inspire love or loyalty and Morgana King as mama barely exists. Though it netted an Oscar, Brando's largely immobile performance is gimmicky, and really a supporting role in terms of screen time. The Godfather is the story of Michael Corleone, and the film is owned by a brilliant Al Pacino. In support, Caan, Keaton and Duvall are pretty much one-note. The Godfather is an acknowledged film classic that became a cultural touchstone which inspired imitations and parodies;it was a media event and a box office phenomenon that swept the Oscars and Brando's sending Sasheen Littlefeather to refuse his Oscar only added to it's legend.