It's not personal. It's business.

Rating: 9/10 (3 November 2012)

This is a masterpiece of modern film-making. Coppola has managed to make his audience care about a Mafia crime dynasty, as we follow the inevitable transition of power from the venerable Don Vito Corleone (Brando) to the youngest of his three sons Michael (Pacino). This was something that the ageing Don never wanted for Michael, wanting to see him legitimised as a Senator or a Governor, but fate and the violent nature of their chosen profession steps in. Impulsive and violent eldest son Sonny (Caan) is duped and gunned down in a drug war, and middle son Fredo is overlooked as he is just not Don material. Michael, however, is his father's son, and his path into the family business is partially forced on him after an attempt on his father's life. Humiliated and beaten by the New York Chief of Police (who is in the pocket of a rival mafia Family), his life changes when he makes a character defining decision to take revenge on both the Police Chief and a rival narcotics trafficker named Sollozo, who, having made the attempt on the Don's life, must now see it through or forever be a marked man. Michael completes the task with a steely eyed determination, and murders both men in a chilling scene in a family restaurant. Michael is then forced to flee the USA to hide in Sicliy under the protection of a friendly Mafia family. His character is further developed after he falls in love with and marries a beautiful Sicilian peasant girl, who is mistakenly murdered when his enemies track him down to Sicily. When Michael returns to America, he is not the same man that sat in his sister's wedding celebration at the start of the movie. He is older, wiser and surrounded as he has been by death and betrayal, those intervening years have been crucial to his character development. Like his father before him, he has chosen his path and has become a Don in waiting. This is an accolade that the older Don Corleone does not wait long to pass on to him, and although the old Don is still alive (surviving the five bullets Sollozo's assassins hit him with) he hands over the reins of power to Michael. Michael, now at the head of the business, accelerates the nefarious activities of the family. He seeks to relocate them to Nevada, but must tie up his New York business, split his territory between his Lieutenants Tessio and Clemenza fairly and settle old scores first. He uses his father as Consigliari, and Tom Hagen, the Families lawyer and Consigliari is quickly sidelined both because, as Michael tells him, he is not a wartime Consigliari, and because he needs his hands clean after the family re-settle in Nevada. The Assassination / Baptism scene is unparallelled, as Michael cuts down his enemies with a ruthlessness that maybe even the old Don did not possess, perhaps the reason why he stepped aside. These scenes are an interlinked series of brutal murders as Michael wipes the slate clean and assassinates anyone and everyone who have opposed the family. The genius is that the murders are interspersed with cutbacks to Michael standing as Godfather to his sister Connie's child, in Church, renouncing evil and Satan, as his Capo's and button men rampage through the remaining heads of the other five families. It is truly breathtaking film making. There has never been a better or stronger collection of actors ever assembled for any film before or since, and the dialogue is as memorable as anything ever committed to the page. There are no weak spots in this movie and the point to consider is that even though this is a film made against the background of crime and violence, and these play a huge part in what unfolds, it is essentially a film about family and loyalty. When the Corleone's decide to take murderous revenge on the heads of the other families, you do not turn from the screen at the savagery which is undoubtedly there to be seen, but instead, you root for Michael to be successful. There are simply too many memorable scenes to recount, but the final scene played out immediately after Michael orders that a Doctor be called for Connie because she is quite rightly hysterical (he has had her husband Carlo garroted out of revenge for Sonny's death) where Kay watches Michael's Capo's pay homage to him by kissing his hand/ring, while his Chief assassin, Neri slowly and deliberately closes the door in her face is the best ending in cinema history. I will end by stating that the Godfather II, is, if it were possible, even better. You will not regret watching this movie. It will stay with you for a long time after the final credits have rolled.