better with age, but not by much

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2010)

It shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that the long-awaited end (hopefully) to The Godfather saga doesn't measure up to its predecessors. Francis Coppola accomplished everything he set out to do and, under the circumstances, produced as good a Part III as anyone possibly could, but the fact remains that the movie didn't need to be made in the first place, except of course to help revitalize the sagging career of its director. The new film does nothing to enrich the earlier episodes; too much of it is simply a carbon copy of what worked (because it was fresh) the first (and second) time around. That terrible sense of Mafia ritual is still vivid, but Coppola takes the operatic elements of the story much too literally (especially during the protracted climax), and the metamorphosis of Michael Corleone into a kinder, gentler padrone was a major miscalculation. The film at least provides one memorable performance (a fiery Andy Garcia, playing Sonny Corleone's ambitious bastard son), but the script reads as if it were written under duress, with plenty of incidental plotting but not anywhere near enough momentum.