Few if any sequels live up to the original, but this one does!

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2005)

This movie is every bit as good as the original. Perhaps a bit less entertaining, but surely the more intelligent of the two movies. The plot line is far more complex and may be difficult to follow for those folks with less than ideal intellectual capacities. The plot line takes us back and forth from the present in Las Vegas, New York, Miami and Havana, Cuba to the past in Sicily where it traces the early life of the father Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando in the original and brought back to life by Robert Deniro in the flashback scenes) as he struggles to survive in Sicily as a child, eventually making his way to America. For those of you, like myself, of Italian-American heritage, the scene where the young boy arrives in Ellis Island is especially poignant.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but the central theme of the movie is that Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) must come to grips with the fact that despite all his efforts, he cannot escape becoming the same kind of man as his father, perhaps even worse. And in the end he must deal with betrayal and confront the ironic ends to which he will go to "protect his family" at all costs. The lessons in this blown up morality play are profound and timeless.
Like the original movie, the acting is brilliant, perhaps even better than the first movie thanks to a stunning turn by Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth (very loosely based on real life mob figure Meyer Lansky) and a typically awesome performance by Robert Deniro as the young Vito.
10 out 10