All in all, flawed but still enjoyable

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2002)

I just watched G3 for the first time ever after re-living parts I and II on DVD recently, and while I agree with most comments about (a) that it was worse than the others, (b) that Sofia problem (although she wasn't the moral equivalent of Jar Jar Binks as some people seem to think), (c) that Connie metamorphosis and (d) that Tom Hagen absence, I still think it was a decent movie. Pacino's performance was absolutely awesome, and it is hard to believe why someone as talentless as Kevin Costner was nominated for Best Actor that year, and Pacino wasn't. Andy Garcia was surprisingly good, and Diane Keaton unsurprisingly.
Unlike some others, I also like the idea of using the Vatican banking scandal as a story line, along with the rapid death of Pope John Paul I. The movie may have come too late for people to remember the events, but they are still definitely mysterious enough to form the stuff of hundreds of films. If anything, public knowledge about what happened barely scratched the surface, and why shouldn't an American Mafia family have been involved in the financial dealings? What spoiled it for me slightly is that I constantly kept asking myself why the movie is expressly set in 1979 - the actual events including the deaths of the popes were in 1978. If you interweave fictional and real events, there shouldn't be such an anachronism.
Still, in my opinion somewhere around 7.5/10.