The Godfather Part I

Rating: 3/10 (10 August 2015)

Even though I gave this film a three star rating (pretty high for me), I consider it one of the more overrated ever. Reviewers from some newspapers and magazines gave it strong advanced notices, and that got the ball rolling before other media and the public saw it. Plus it had almost an all-star cast headed by Brando, often considered the king of American actors of his generation. Granted Pacino and some of the others were young but most of the cast had some reputation going in.
I know Coppola had not directed much if any but was known as a good writer, especially from "Patton." My gripe with the movie is it is basically an overblown melodrama with a lot of hype and gloss. The cinematography is good but not great. The acting: while a few minor people are good, Brando is terrible, mumbling more than ever with those cotton balls or whatever in his cheeks. Why did he think he had to play it this way? James Caan gives the best performance. And the flick is hackneyed, an old-time gangster one, full of violence and anger and crudeness. It is not film noir. They took the crime genre and Hollywooded it up, trying to make something grandiose. Two gangs pitted against each other, using gages and fifty caliber submachine guns. So what else is new? "Little Caesar" was better.