Breathtaking in its scope and tragic grandeur...

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2001)

Coppola's masterpiece is rivaled only by "The Godfather, Part II" in which the 1940s setting of the first movie is extended backwards and forwards to reveal the corrupting effect of power...The film, breathtaking in its scope and tragic grandeur, shows two parallel stories extending two different time periods: the early career of young Vito Corleone seen first around the turn of the 20th century in Sicily, and then in 1917, building his criminal underworld in the Italian ghettos of New York City, post World War I, plus that of his son, Michael (Al Pacino) desperately trying to keep his family together...
Al Pacino's performance is quiet and solemn... He is cold and ruthless, with a whole contrast from the idealistic innocent war hero we initially met at the beginning of the first film... Here he's a calculating and frightening force, seeking to expand casinos into Pre-Revolutionary Cuba and consolidating an empire surrounded by perfidy and treason, maintaining total confidence in his ability to control the situation whether testifying before enraging Senators or trying to outface his worst enemies...
The film's haunting final shot of a lonely, isolated paranoid Michael in his empty compound, is an unforgettable movie scene, a tragic portrait of a lonely and fully damned person, emotionally empty and finished, far from a waspish wife, more distant from a faithful lawyer...
De Niro's rise, from an orphan child by a family feud back in Italy to a hood in New York and his position as a respected Don, provides a welcome break from Pacino's relentless attitude... Since the people he kills seem to deserve it, Vito comes off better than Michael does, and it was wise of Coppola to shuffle the two stories together despite lengthy flashbacks and the disturbance of continuity...
The entire cast contributes greatly to the success of the film: Lee Strasberg, a fascinating mixture of lust and ruthlessness; G. D. Spradlin, absolutely right as the sinister and corrupt Nevada Senator; Michael V. Gazzo, unforgettable as the troubled gray-haired informer; Gastone Moschin, excellent as the blackmailer in white suit; John Cazale, marvelously timid as the vague, confused, and hesitant Fredo; Diane Keaton, clearly irrational as the long-suffering wife Kay; Talia Shire, too extravagant as the lousy mother; Troy Donahue too ambitious as the fortune-hunting suitor; and Robert Duvall excels as the confidant, and retainer to the all-powerful Corleone family...
Coppola's motion picture is not just a mere supply with new characters and events from the original, it's a far more complex and intimate movie than its predecessor... It is not really a sequel... It's just more... It cleverly shifts in time between two distinct narratives with extreme realistic violence and criminal mentality of gangsters...