A tour de force of cinema

Rating: 10/10 (29 March 2015)

Since I was a small boy, whenever I heard of others talking of the greatest movies ever made, The Godfather always came up,most of the time, at the top. I always thought that the movie was overrated, that is, until watched it two years ago.
How to tell if a movie is good? If you can't stop thinking about it, if you keep replaying the characters' lines in your sleep, then the movie isn't just good, it's great. The Godfather's impact on the movie industry is incalculable, in almost ever modern gangster movie there is at least one reference to it.
I can find no flaw in this movie. If there were anything such as a 'perfect' movie, this is it. Coppola provides excellent direction such that though the movie stretches to almost three hours, you won't be bored for one minute.
The highlight of this film is an innovation. The gangsters here are not portrayed as mindless monsters but as men with families. We see Vito and Michael Corleone as protagonists rather than antagonists. Credit for this goes to Mario Puzo's original source material but let us not forget the actors.
Marlon Brando gives the greatest performance of not only his career but of any other actor as the family patriarch. He's so Don-like that you just wished you could go to him with all your problems too. Al Pacino plays Michael Corleone. But he doesn't give a single performance, he gives two. At the beginning, he plays a war hero who doesn't want anything to do with the family business. Pacino skillfully shows us Michael's transition from this to a cold blooded Don at the end. The other actors play their parts well too. In fact, there has never been any other better cast than the cast of The Godfather.
A cinematic masterpiece, this is one for the ages.