The Masterpiece of Organized Crime, Everything Started Here.

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2013)

Simply you just have to see it. If there wasn't before this movie a "mafia" with a code of honor brought over from Sicilia to the US, this movie created it. Nowadays it's an integral part of North American folk history.
It depicts organized crime as a family, a respectable business, carried out under strict regulations, enforced out by the "pater familia" out of the respect, appreciation and authority gained among his extended family, "the village", while employing the respect others professed for him to preserve his authority, and yet, although perceived as last recourse, if necessary to keep his "Family", honor or authority safe, employing without hesitation blunt and unforgiving brute force was neither taboo nor regretted.
Changes in the "Old Ways" are about manifest as a new younger generation (US born, and no Italian immigrants) began to take over the family business and the drugs dealing business appeared in the picture — before they were forbidden as the code didn't allow for indiscriminate damage to the "Extended Family" (their own people).
But now it was more a question of supremacy against other ethnicities (immigrants and their descendants), who were willing to sell drugs to anyone who wanted to buy, even their own people or the "Italo-Americans".
As they saw it, If they let them get all the pieces of this pie, the drug business which was so lucrative, they'll quickly become the most powerful and would pose a real threat to the mere existence of "The Family".
The youngsters didn't find a solution viable other than to break the code and start dealing with drugs (even to their own "Extended Families", as they reasoning was that they were going to get it anyways, it'll always be better that the business remained in "The Family".
From there on, although at first sight it may had seem everything continued like before, it really wasn't like that at all, something had broken at the very root of "The Family", it had changed forever and they were in a path of no return. Respect was slowly and continuously replaced by fear... And that was a one way ticket to a new era, the one of a Wounded to Death, Crumbling Empire.
After watching The Trilogy and the movies Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, and Scarface. If you can (have the spare time), do not miss The Sopranos (the HBO TV Series) by the also great James Gandolfini.
See how a Empire can bleed to death because a wrong decision betrayed what they stood for and that changed everything so much that they lost their reason d'être.