Special

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2002)

A masterpiece in its own right, Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo's deepened history of a family's attempted assimilation into an America that increasingly resists them is told by creators that clearly love their people equally as much as they loathe them. Coppola and Puzo juggle two stories, the growth of the Corleone family under the direction of youngest son Michael (Al Pacino) as he grimly tries to take the business legitimate, and the early life of his orphaned father (played here Robert De Niro in a bemused but attentive manner, with dialogue almost entirely in Italian) as he struggles to find his place in the New World. The filmmakers (and this is a collaboration between director and co-scenarist, make no mistake) with the success of the first film have the freedom to relax and tell a thorough story and it unfolds over more than three hours with pinpoint precision and convincing detail. The history it encompasses includes a fascinating foray into Cuba on the eve of revolution and it seems fresh, significant--a subject hitherto unexplored on the big screen; it makes the film seem special, independent of its older sibling. The performances are, again, wonderful and include a startlingly bitter Diane Keaton, a nuanced, graceful Lee Strasberg and a heartbreaking John Cazale. While no film can quite stand alongside its predecessor, this one comes as close as one can come and no film can quite stand alongside this one either.