Most of the Film Is Forgettable, Fly-Over Country

Rating: 6/10 (5 August 2017)

Old Francis Ford must have really been off his meds when he made this film. He's lucky they didn't take away his director's chair for good. First of all the three leading women were absolutely an embarrassment to the art of film and I blame terrible acting on the director. It's his project and he can either get what he wants on film or get new actors. I think that just about any three other actresses would have done a better job than his daughter, his cousin, and Diane Keaton. Talia Shire gives an absolutely cringe-worthy performance at every step and Sofia Coppola is just no one's idea of an actress. What was he thinking? Eli Wallach was also completely horrible. Joe Mantegna plays a silly caricature of a gangster which works well in parody form on The Simpsons but is ridiculous in this movie. Even Al Pacino phones this one in.
Andy Garcia carries about 90% of this movie and without him it would have been completely awful.
"He dips his bullets in cyanide," it is said of one of the gangsters which is just stupid because bullets are pretty much lethal all on their own.
The story is a convoluted mess that tries to wow us with its intricacies but all of the Vatican shenanigans just come across as desperation because they didn't have much of a story to sell.
The only saving grace of the movie are the few well-done action sequences and a couple of other scenes that add tension. The meeting between Al, Andy, and Joe in the office, the hit scene in the apartment, the execution of Joey Zaza, to name a few. The helicopter shootout of the casino was way, way over-the-top and stupid.
Most of the movie is the film equivalent of fly-over country, or fast-forward country.