Not a sequel. Better.

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2000)

Alright, already. Coppola himself says he would have given the picture another name, but calling it the Godfather sells tickets (and everyone would've called it a sequel anyway). Look, filmmaking is a business, like any other ... he can't sit around and think up ways to satisfy a handful of Puzo puristas.
About the movie? BRILLIANT! My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? This isn't even a gangster movie and, heaven forbid, from a humanist point-of-view it is a much better film than I or II (which may as well be the same movie, the pace just picks up near the end of the 6 hour saga). Even those who have never seen the original will bask in the glow.
The personal redemption of on-again-off-again Don Michael Corleone is almost secondary to the cultural tragedy in a story of well-to-do Italian-American family (the Coppolas) and their struggle with maintaining influence in a business and legal world more corrupt than the Sicily their grandparents left behind (Hollywood) -- and in the role of the spoiled-rich daughter with human longings, who better than the original article (Sofia)? I almost cried during her performance (and I'm a guy). What other actress could possibly have brought to the role the same authenticity?
Power struggles among men never cease, and the higher one rises in this world the thinner the air gets. The air is cleaner and purer, no doubt, but it can also make the subject dizzy and exhausted. Look at Talia Shire and Andy Garcia's characters -- Connie is finally in love with life after 45 years of being an airhead and ready to kick some ass. And the "God's Banker" saga merely illustrates the ridiculousness of attempting to buy salvation, since men of the cloth are last one's you should trust with your money because they have the least experience managing it. Incest is there because (as the operetta says) the power-hungry are fated to desire (and suffer for) that which they cannot possess (esp. rich cousins).
In conlusion, the Corleones in III are _any_ of your families that have busted their balls to be something, only to find that the more they possess, the harder they have to fight to keep it. Maybe even some of the younger generations got sacrificed along the way. The elements of Greek tragedy planted by colonists 2500 years ago in Sicily became cultural cliches because they were the truth; they speak to us today because we wish they were not.