An important event in the history of American cinema

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 2003)

Made in the last era of great Hollywood movies - the 70s - "The Godfather" today is as relevant, fresh and even groundbreaking as it was some thirty years ago. Jewels handcrafted with this much care are seldom made anymore. But even if they still were the order of the day, it would be truly hard to recapture something this revolutionary.
Perfect movie in pretty much every way, "Godfather" starts off in celebratory atmosphere as the aging Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) receives clients' asking for favours while his daughter Connie (Talia Shire) is getting married outside. It's 1946, and through the events at the wedding we're getting a stylish introduction to the patriarchal mafia family - reasonable and wise old Don Vito with his three sons: hothead philanderer Sonny (James Caan), inadequate Fredo (John Cazale) and strong willed WW2 veteran Michael (Al Pacino) who's reluctant to enter the family business. From the shocking introductory vignette involving a horse's head and a Hollywood studio head (Copolla's not-so-subtle dig at the movie business) memorable scenes follow one another: attempt at Don Vito's life, a visit to his wounded father at the hospital which for young Michael ends up being the watershed event that pushes him over to 'the dark side', Sollazzo-McCluskey killings in the Bronx restaurant, Michael's subsequent exile in Sicily with tragic marriage to beautiful Apollonia, Sonny's assassination and the final sequence intertwining scenes of Michael attending his nephew's baptism as his capos are eliminating competing mafia heads and traitors within the family....
It all takes place within a closed world where not being loyal is the only crime and everything functions according to those rules so that audience can understand, even sympathize with characters when they're exhibiting truly monstrous behaviour.
There's no doubt in my mind this is a highly romanticized version of mafia business, but who cares  this movie is so much more. A true epic, that works on so many levels.