Good, very well-made film, but somewhat overrated

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2010)

I think The Godfather is very well-made and a good film on the whole; very well-acted, well-scored, and had effective dialogue, but I think it's somewhat overrated.
This is the story it TRIED to tell........
Michael Corleone is the son of Sicilian Mafia Don Vito Corleone. Unlike his siblings, he wants nothing to do with the family business, and his father wouldn't have it any other way. After getting back from WWII, he wants to shield his girlfriend Kay from his family. But when a rival to Vito named Sollozzo comes along, a chain of events is set into motion that culminates in Vito's life hanging in the balance. Although he wanted nothing to do with the business, he decides to kill those who are a threat to Vito out of love for his father. By so doing, he forced himself to live in exile in Sicily for 3 years, where he learns more of the family/Sicilian tradition, and gets married. Soon after the death of his new wife Apollonia, he was able to return to the US and is reunited with Kay. Only he isn't the same man who she knew from before; he is very much a part of the family business, and indeed is the actual head of the mafia. He wants Kay to marry him, but not so much because he loves her as because of his newly-found Sicilian beliefs in the importance of family. He is now cold and ruthless in the way he deals with his enemies, and by the end of the film, he became the very sort of person that he wanted nothing to do with at the beginning of the movie.
This is how the story came across to me..........
Michael Corleone is the son of Sicilian Mafia Don Vito Corleone. Unlike his siblings, he wants nothing to do with the family business, and his father wouldn't have it any other way. After getting back from WWII, he wants to shield his girlfriend Kay from his family. The movie does a dismal job in establishing this, and also does a dismal job in establishing the Michael/Kay relationship. Other than a few lines in the opening wedding scene, we never really got to know Michael back when he was a good man, and we hardly saw any of Michael/Kay together back when their relationship was healthy. So then he kills Sollozzo & that cop, runs to Sicily, then gets hit "by the thunderbolt" of Apollonia, whom I found to be very annoying. So we get a montage of Michael's life in Sicily (seen while some very nice music is playing), and all of a sudden he wholeheartedly embraces the Sicilian way of family, mob, etc. Michael comes back to America a changed man, and the film finishes with the process of his transformation being complete, but because of the poor job the film did in establishing who he was prior to the events of the movie, and how the change itself actually happened, Michael becoming what he once opposed ended up having very little impact on me.
Still, a good movie on the whole, with some great scenes like the restaurant shooting and the front yard talk between Michael & Vito.