Good but not great film!

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2018)

I saw the film for the very time tonight and while I did enjoy it, I felt it was a bit overrated. There's been so much hype and deconstruction of this film over the last 4 decades, it's hard to approach it with a fresh perspective. Th cinematography was really beautiful and the lighting especially in the indoor scenes really set a glorious mood. I enjoyed the more subtle performances given by Diane Keaton and Al Pacino. A lot of the violence however, seemed gratuitous. The biggest flaw, frankly, was choosing Marlon Brando to play the Don. I love this actor and have enjoyed many of his performances, but this wasn't one of them. I thought he was dreadfully over-acting and ghoulish. It was a gross caricature and how he won "best actor" is a mystery to me! All the talk of how he had to "age" himself for the character made a mockery of his role with the Kleenex stuffed in his mouth and his put-on gangster voice was just distracting in the end.