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Rating: 3/10 (30 August 2008)

While this movie is called "Part III," it's really not on a par with the first two movies which are awesome cinematic achievements and among the best movies ever made. "The Godfather Part III" is a major disappointment. It was really only made because writer/director/producer Francis Ford Coppola went bankrupt in the 1980s and so, he cashed in the chip of the Godfather sequel that he'd been holding onto since 1974. The result is this movie.
The main problem is that it's a movie with nothing to say. If you look at the "Making Of" documentary on the DVD, you see Coppola struggling to figure out what the movie is about and he never really does. He just wanted the money from it to get himself out of financial difficulties, it would never have been made otherwise and some think it never should have been.
In "The Godfather Part III," we're expected to believe that Michael Corleone, a vicious Mafia boss who has broken every law there is and had dozens of people executed, is suddenly wracked with guilt about what he's done. We know from real-life gangsters that that just isn't so. Real gangsters have no conscience to begin with and they certainly don't develop one by murdering over and over again. They will kill anyone to stay in power until the end and will sell out anyone to avoid prison. Not only is Michael's sudden turn to goodness not believable, it's just not very interesting either. We're not watching a Godfather movie to see righteousness, we want to see the ruthless dark side of power. Michael should have gone out like Hitler in his bunker, the problem is that Pacino had already done that ending in "Scarface."
Andy Garcia is the best thing about this film, he's excellent in it as Sonny Corleone's (James Caan's) illegitimate son and he rightly got an Oscar nomination for his part. He brings the passion and commitment that the other performances lack here, especially Sofia Coppola's (Coppola's daughter). She was a last-minute replacement for Winona Ryder, but even if Ryder had been in this, it wouldn't have made much difference. The script is the problem. (Coppola wanted six months to write the script with Mario Puzo, the studio gave him six weeks and it shows. Ironically, Andy Garcia was suggested to Coppola by Paramount and he immediately agreed, a far cry from the first film where everything great about it was a result of Coppola fighting the studio tooth and nail every step of the way, even down to the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino)
It's well shot by Gordon Willis, but it does fall back on a formula that had been established in the first two movies (party at the start, finish off enemies at end).
Pacino is given way too much dialogue to say. It's all sentimental, mumbling meanderings. Where are the silences and shark-like stare that Michael used with such menacing effect in the first movies? His thunderous silences spoke volumes, far more than the lumps of text he speaks here. He's an old, sick man in this one and it was a mistake to do that as, again, that's just not very interesting compared to the brutal, paranoid demagogue he had become in "The Godfather Part II." Pacino wasn't that old in 1989/90 when this was being made, Coppola could have set it when Michael was still healthy and it would have been better.
You might enjoy this if you haven't seen Parts I and II, but it was a major disappointment for me when I saw it in the cinema and it still is. There has been a revisionist attempt to say it's not a bad movie, but it's flaws far outweigh the good things in it. This is one for completists only.