I remember seeing this movie as a 8 or 9 year old kid when it was first released

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2006)

I remember seeing this as an 8 or 9 year old kid with a friend of mine when it first came out(with no parental guidance, the manager of the theatre never enforced the rating system). You would think a 8 or 9 year kid at the time would find the movie long or boring, but quite the opposite, when it had an intermission at the 2 hour mark we was like wow 2 hours has passed!! This is a movie best not watched on TV where there is commercials to interrupt because TV tends to make one's attention span short due to the enormity of other programming to watch.I remember watching it on TV years later and thinking to myself i can see how someone just seeing it for the first time would find it long and boring. The reason being is because if you do not tune on it from the beginning it is not the type of movie that will catch your attention compared to the action adventure blockbuster movies people are use to seeing. For a movie to keep a couple of 8 or 9 year old kids interested for 4 hours it had to done something right.I am not a movie critic so i don't feel comfortable rating it but to this day it is one of the few movies i can clearly recall almost every scene as compared to other movies where i just have a vague recollection of what they were about and what happened when and where.One reason i think i enjoyed it so much as a kid was because the story was interesting. A mafia kingpin trying to survive gang-wars and treachery.He realizes it is not good profession or lifestyle to have so he tried to steer his son Michael into a peaceful legitimate respectable profession. He tries to explain to Michael the reasons he turned to this lifestyle is because he didn't have access to the educational opportunities Michael had access to. With a wife and many children to feed and jobs very scarce he had to do what was necessary so his family could eat and survive. He knew that Sonny's temperament would not allow Sonny to change course from the family's profession and Fredo so much a nincompoop that Fredo could not have too much responsibility or pressure thrust on him and would need someone to look after him so he kinda was treated like the women of the family. But he saw in Michael intelligence and ability, and he wanted Michael to use his talents legitimately and achieve the American Dream. Sorta what every father wishes for their sons. I think the turning point for Michael from turning from the American Dream was when the police under McCluskey instead of normally taking a neutral role in the war between the gangs took an active role in protecting Sollozo and trying to rid Don Vito of any bodyguards at the Hospital so the allied Sollozo-Barzini-Tattaglia camp could finish Don Vito off. When Michael was roughed up by McCluskey and the police he began to see the American Dream as a big corrupt hypocrisy and that money and the access to money was the only thing that really mattered in America. Recall the speech he gave to Mary Kay when he told her she was the one who was really naive not him ( It may have been in The Godfather part 2).From that point on Michael began see the irony and erroneous assertions of what his dad was saying that politicians and police would desert him if he would began to expand into narcotics but the exact opposite was happening with the opposing Sollozo-Barzini-Tattaglia faction as their Consigliere Tom Hagen(Robert Duvall) predicted. Sollozo was virtually untouchable because he had Police protection because of the wealth he accumulated from his narcotic operations.As a result Michael lost all his idealism and became a pragmatist. Why try to become legitimate and respectable when no one really is and the so called legitimate and respectable people behind closed doors sell out to the highest bidders regardless whether or not if they are ruthless killers, murderers and worst scum of society.You can transform into being respectable and legit once you accumulate your wealth. Notice the talk by Michael near the end that they are moving the operations to Las Vegas and going Legit.