Good in part - but not necessarily as The Godfather

Rating: Null/10 (31 May 2000)

SPOILERS!
A good film, in two parts. If this had been the only Godfather ever released, it might have been up for the academy award. That's all on its own; particularly as it was a 1990 film, and films were starting to get a tad weaker, in general, by that point.
But it a) must not necessarily be seen as a sequel to the Godfather, and b) it might be seen as the most 'operatic' or Shakespearian of the bunch. It's not the sequel because it's no longer really the Puzo series, and the characters seem a bit different. The Godfather characters are sort of borrowed for this film, you could say. And I thought of classic drama and opera as soon as the assassin was introduced. He's sort of Shakespeare's simultaneously clumsy and comical competent killer.
What gets weird is the Vatican Bank story leeching into the election of JP I. We are to believe that Don Corleone has a private confession with the cardinal before he is elected Pope; and of course, the Don in short order goes ahead and orders the purge of assorted gangsters, just like he did in the previous film. But . . . And we are further to believe that an archbishop conspirator in the scandal literally poisoned the tea of JP I, and killed him. Now the poison in the drink is also the stuff of classic drama. And I'd take it for that. But as history, it seems laughable. Don Michael's order in the movie end purge literally includes this evil renegade archbishop, to the point of having some gunman lurking in the shadows shoot him, in the Vatican, as he walks up a winding staircase. The cardinal is seen plummeting over the side and falling down onto the worm's eye camera in the gallery below. Again - operatic, yes. Metaphorical fiction, sure. Characters as types even more than characters - yes. A Godfather I and II, not really. The play is the almost comical (yes, that's right) who gets 'hit' first, almost Shakespearian black comedy, as Ma Corleone goes for the other Don, the other Don goes for Don Michael, maybe the Pope, and the other Corleones hit the hitters, and so on. It all happens simultaneously, as the bunch sit there watching the opera. You have the quick cut to the action happening elsewhere (which is a Godfather trademark technic, to be fair).
I said two parts because the best part seems all these scenes when the family goes to Italy. I think it might have been much better if they'd gone easy on the old mob stuff, frankly, cut out much of the first part, and gone quicker to Italy, stayed with the story there longer, and developed the estrangment and reconciling of father and son - which brought the cast to Italy, to the opera. That part not only isn't developed, it's pretty much not even present - which is a little startling. The final revenge is just sort of dashed off, even after a private confession with the man soon to become Pope. That's just forgotten. That's hard to believe. It might have benefitted from a little of the emoting of the Don's final scream as dear Mary is accidentally shot by the goofy but dangerous assassin, rather than just a calm - hey, let's get revenge.
Of course, such a suggested movie would be even more of a departure from Godfather I and II than this film was. But it seems that's the direction 'Francis' wanted to go, but didn't have the guts, perhaps, to go all the way. As for his daughter in the role, she obv. had trouble with the acting. But it wasn't that bad. As for Keaton, she just didn't seem all there, like she was just reading her lines. As for Shire, I thought she was good - same for Garcia. I thought the cameo by now SF Mayor Willie Brown was appropriate, trying to line up crooked judges. As for Pacino, himself, I kept flashing on Dick Tracy given his delivery of some of those lines. But again . . hey. As for a comparison with the contemporaneous Goodfellas, this film shows more the uselessness of gangsterism than the off and on glorification found in Scorsese's somewhat less than epic film. The best scene in this regard might be the final scene. Long shot of the 90ish (?) near death husk of the great Don Michael, who 'never wanted to be Don', sitting next to a dilapidated Italian villa on a folding chair or something, reading the paper, just going limp and falling off the chair - dead. End of story, cut to credits. That's it. That's what his life amounted to. Regrets and remorse of his daughter's murder filling his thoughts. Maybe even a life never really even lived. Seemed more telling than anything in Scorsese's film.