OK, maybe I get it now (a qualified thumbs-up)

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2002)

I have an earlier review of this movie posted somewhere on this site in which I pretty much deconstruct it and its status as a "classic sequel" and even "a great movie." A handful of great scenes populate it, to be sure, and a spate of fine performances (particularly a toweringly great one from Pacino), but nothing that coheres into greatness - particularly as it's at the service of a turgid and convoluted plot.
All of which I more or less stand by - at least as it befits my own taste and predilections. But I recently had some insight into why this sequel may be so well-respected: in its very dourness and lack of fire, it paints the unremittingly grim portrait of Mafia life that many apparently felt was missing from the first Godfather. I recently showed that movie to a group of my friends who had never seen it before (amazing in this day and age, no?) and they all enjoyed it - but, to a man, they felt that it definitely glorified and mythologized the violence it showed and the lifestyle it portrayed. Personally, I have a hard time seeing this - and, pay attention, because I believe here lies the discrepancy between the people who love the sequel and those who don't. On the most simplistic level, if you feel the first film glorifies the Mob - and feel at least slightly cheated because of it - you will most likely have an appreciation for the second film. If you feel, like I do, that the first movie sucks you into associating and sympathizing (hell, even *loving*!) these characters, but that the violence brings everything all back home and reminds you the evil and corruption which undergirds their way of life - then the second movie, though having perhaps some interesting elaborations upon this theme, offers nothing genuinely new. And is, therefore - despite all the evident care and superb craft involved - kind of a waste of time.
But, since the violence and worldview depicted in The Godfather is such a polarizing issue, I suppose it was a good idea that Francis Coppola decided to have another go at it, ramming down his point for all those who didn't get it the first time: "The Mob is BAD, it CORRUPTS YOUR SOUL, and NO GOOD CAN COME OF IT!" These are good points to be made, and perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss them. I had just thought, previously, that . . . well, they're obvious (or should be, anyway - and anyone to whom they're not obvious is probably beyond all hope) and that the director had already made them once. Clearly, not everyone feels The Godfather makes those points cogently enough (as my friend says about the end of the first movie: "Sure, Michael is cold, ruthless and lies to his wife - but DAMN, he's just the *man*!"). For those people, The Godfather Part II exists, and that's fine. I'll never speak ill of the movie again.
Except for those flashback scenes - those are still terrible! Either they should form a completely different movie unto themselves, or they should be cut out entirely (watching the second film as part of "The Godfather Saga", where these flashbacks have been excised, is infinitely more rewarding to me). I still don't know what function they serve - if anything, they seem a throwback to the preciousness and romanticism of the first film, except far worse, in my opinion. But no one seems to agree with me, so I'll stop beating the tune on that one . . .
But as long as I'm here and have got this movie in my sights for a second time (and am inclined to dwell on its strengths rather than its faults), let me just expand upon what I said earlier about the acting: the film is a veritable master's class in great acting, coming in all shapes and varieties. The coiled intensity of Pacino is complemented by an equally quiet yet forceful turn by Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen (whose work in both Godfathers is some of the greatest, yet most unsung, in cinema history). Lee Strasberg does wonderful things with the Hyman Roth character, adding new layers and shadings in every scene, and his soliloquy to Michael about Moe Greene is as dead-on perfect as anything can be in this world. Similarly, Michael Gazzo takes a seemingly annoying and one-note character (Pentangeli) and works in so much depth and humanity, that at the end he's one of your favorite people in the entire Godfather story (doubly amazing, since he didn't have any automatic goodwill from the audience by being a carryover from the first film). The quiet scene between he and Duvall near the end is, in some ways, the most shocking, cold-hearted and violent of the whole series - and not one weapon is drawn, the two speaking in pleasantries the entire time, barely above a murmur. This, folks, is great acting - as well as sophisticated writing, all topped off by a director who has total confidence in the audience to get it, without his having to exaggerate or accentuate a thing. This is, simply, peerless moviemaking.
Such peerlessness exists, for me, in doses rather than all the way through in The Godfather Part II. But to extrapolate from this that the film is somehow worthless is a mistake - one I must apologize for. Though I still stand by my assessment that, for me anyway, the second Godfather is largely "unnecessary", I am more aware and sympathetic to the larger purpose it serves for a good deal of the audience. And, necessary or not, it still has on show some absolutely top-notch cinema acting, writing and directing. Maybe it, unlike the first one, is an offer I *can* refuse, but having once accepted it, I'm there for the duration.