"I would burn in hell to keep you safe."

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2010)

The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990) is an unnecessary follow-up to the devastating gangster epics that defined the '70s. Al Pacino, who in the intervening 14 years had begun shouting a very lot, returns as Michael Corleone, the mafia don who's going legit - with a little help from the Catholic Church. Also along for the ride is his brother Sonny's non-legit offspring, Andy Garcia, whose unquestioning loyalty just about makes up for his appalling temper - and the fact he's got the hots for his cousin, Michael's daughter (Sofia Coppola). The film begins with a set of sumptuous tracking shots around various unpopulated ruins that suggest this is going to be "Terence Davies' The Godfather". Alas, no. Instead, we're pitched into an overambitious story concerning high finance, Papal assassination and moral absolution that dwarfs the curiously uninvolving Garcia-Coppola romance.
Screenwriters Coppola and Mario Puzo strain to make each line a killer - when they're not penning exposition - meaning that the script is clunky and often lacking insight. Take the scene between Corleone and estranged wife Kay (Diane Keaton). "I don't hate you, Michael" she says. "I dread you." So far, so agreeably unexpected, but they won't shut up - and the resulting exchanges are first over-dramatic and then superfluous. "I did what I could, Kay, to protect all of you from the horrors of this world," he says. Her reply? "But you became my horror. The children still love you, though. Especially Mary." Err, great. Mary, for her part, has come in for a bit of flak - some of it deserved. Though the director's daughter has an interesting face and excels during one heartbroken exchange (the "I'll always love you" bit), her delivery is often distressingly wooden in a way you rarely see on screen. And while her beau Garcia is unquestionably charismatic, he's also clichéd and dull: if he's his generation's answer to James Caan, perhaps we should rephrase the question. Robert DeNiro was turned down for that part, while Robert Duvall's character was killed off after he asked for $5m and Coppola threatened to write Pacino out of the series unless he settled for $2m less than he wanted. That wrangling - and the director's threat therein - betrays the poverty of vision here, with use of footage from the earlier films suggesting desperation rather than an epic sweep, as well as showing exactly how far Coppola had fallen.
The film isn't a complete write-off, though, boasting a hit-by-helicopter that's utterly unexpected and thus entirely great, some fine individual scenes - like Pacino's confession at the Vatican and his son's performance of the series' famous love song - and that certain brown wood-panelled glossy look unique to these films. It's also rarely dull, moving at a fair clip and balancing plot, action and character drama in the traditional manner. But it's rarely special - and within the context of this trilogy, that's pretty damning.