Confusing, overlong but powerful

Rating: 6/10 (25 December 2014)

The second installment of the Godfather trilogy opens strongly and nails its landing. Unfortunately, the film takes a hard right half an hour in and turns into a convoluted game of Clue that I struggled to understand or care about. Al Pacino, whose transformation was complete at the end of the original masterpiece, does great work and works much of the movie magic where the script allows him to. DeNiro is captivatingly subtle in his role as young Vito Corleone, and the trio of Keaton, Cazale and Duvall, who flew under the radar in the original, do some fantastic work as well. However, the film's plot focuses heavily on a mystery that is too confusing to follow and Francis Ford Coppola falls into the errors of the original by introducing swathes of interchangeable Italian-American men who are impossible to tell apart.
As time goes on I am sure that I'll remember the best moments fondly and will be tempted to bump it up, but that will only be because I forgot how agonising it was to sit through 3 hours and 20 minutes.