Not As Good As First Two, But Not As Bad As Some People Say

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2015)

There is a lot wrong with "The Godfather Part 3" but it's not the fault of the cast, or really the fault of writer/director Francis Ford Coppola as it is not an all together bad movie. It's just not on par with with the first two movies.
Plot In A Paragraph: In the final instalment of the Godfather Trilogy, an aging Don Michael Corleone seeks to legitimise his crime family's interests and remove himself from the violent underworld.
Al Pacino is as watchable as always, Talia Shire puts in another brilliant performance, Bridget Fonda Joe Mantegna and George Hamilton all offer superb support, but while Sofia Coppola is universally panned for her work here, it's Andy Garcia (so good in "The Untouchables" and "When A Man Loves A Woman") that I find unwatchable.
I feel Francis Ford Coppola (who has admitted he did this movie as part of dealing with his personal problems) was hamstrung by a decision made by the struggling studio. According to him, he wanted $6 million, producer, director fee with six months work on the scriptwriting. The studio instead gave him only $1 million in fees and 6 weeks to work on the script in order to meet the Christmas 1990 release. Paramount did approve this movie with a $56 million budget under strict conditions that the final cut of the film must not be less than 140 minutes (to get more screenings per day in cinemas) and any additional expenses would not be covered by the studio.
Another problem that was the studio's fault was that the character of Tom Hagen had to be written out of the script because the studio refused to meet Robert Duvall's financial demands when Duvall asked for pay in line with what everyone else was getting. With Hagen gone, an essential character and counterpart for Michael Corleone was missing from the movie.