Highly Underrated and Under-appreciated.

Rating: 10/10 (15 February 2006)

Whenever conversations about the Godfather movies come up, most people are so surprised that I regard this, the third of the trilogy, the best of them all. They all automatically assume that anyone who has seen the entire trilogy likes the first one the best. The first one is spectacular film-making, there's no denying that, but the Godfather Part III is not only more epic, but also more emotional, more resonating, and more poignant.
The entire Godfather saga, in my mind, is not about crime or the Mafia - at the heart of these movies lies one major conflict: Michael Corleone is trying desperately to keep his family from disintegrating around him. At some points, he perpetuates it out of some misplaced pride (such as with Fredo), and at other points, he does in fact hold it together, such as with his children. The first movie is all about how he's drawn into the web of lies and corruption, and how he sees that his family is slowly dying because of it. He enters the business because he feels like he has to in order to preserve the sacred honor of his family. The second movie is perhaps the worst (if any of them could be called 'worst'), simply because it meanders when it should be propelling the story along. The second movie is about how, over everything that he's done, he still can't stop the ball from rolling over his family. The end of Part II - that single shot of Michael sitting in the chair - is one of the best single shots in film history.
That brings me to Godfather, Part III, which probably has some immediate (and rather shallow) detractors because from the outset it feels like an epilogue. That's just the initial impression, though, and then we, the moviegoers, realize that a lot has happened since we last saw Michael. He's guilty over what he's done, especially how he's been unable to save his most precious possessions, and he's trying to change his ways. This Michael is older, more mature, and not as naive about the machinations of worldly men. The fact that the setting changes so much in this film is showing that he has sins to atone for all over the world, and that subconsciously he's maybe reaching out to these past grievances and trying for some closure.
What makes Part III so good, though, is that underlying all of that is a sense of desperation. He knows his time is running out - we all know it as well. It's with morbid fascination that one looks at the running time, especially toward the end, because he hasn't achieved his personal atonement yet. And then...and then the final twenty minutes comes, and we see what Michael's life has been leading up to. All of it - all of his greed, murders, passion - have been futile. His atonement is naught but a passing gesture, because it comes back and haunts him at the end of it all. His family, or what's left of it, is shattered and fragmented in the final scenes.
And where does that leave him? Alone. Absolutely alone. The final scene, in which Michael simply falls over, dead, is the perfect post-script to a brilliant movie, and the end of a truly exquisite saga. Part's I and II are excellent, but they feel incomplete without Part III, and that is because the entire story hasn't been told.
10/10 - Most underrated movie of the 90's.