So it's different than Godfather Part I and II

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2002)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I am one of the people who think this is the perfect ending to the Godfather Saga and I would hate to see a continuation of it. I love the Godfather Part III, especially because it is so different from the other two movies. I would have bored to see it go on in the same fashion as the Part I and II, because it already has been done.
It is like my husband says a chick flick, because it involves a lot of feelings and it does not concentrate so much on the action as the other two. It is the story about how Michael Corleone realises that money and power isn't everything, if you don't have the right people to back you up (Kay and the children).
As an audience it is a relief to see that the old Michael now realises that he failed something terribly to run the family business that his father established and that it now troubles him that he had his own brother killed. (the scene where the line `Just as I thought I was out, they pulled me back in', when Michael called out Fredo's name when he has the diabetes attack, you realised that the old man does not has a lot of time left and he is changing).
Yes, Sophia Coppola was terrible as the role as Mary (Michael's daughter) even if she hadn't been the Directors daughter, but her co-actors made up for it, so it wasn't that bad. Some people laughed when Mary died (because of Sophia's acting), I didn't even see her reaction the first time I saw the movie, because I was so focused on Michael. I think this scene is very moving and it breaks your heart to see the old Don suffer like that over the loss of what he had tried so hard to protect since the first Godfather film.
I liked the idea of not having Michael's own son take the place of the new Don, it would had been too obvious, so having the b**tard nephew come in trying to impress Michael was great, because in the beginning I didn't know if Vince wanted the Corleone's blessing or revenge for not being accepted in the past. I also liked the idea of having Connie having more say in the family business, as a woman, was a good twist to the usual Corleone family tradition where it is run by the males.
I think that Robert Duvall was missed in the film as Tom Hagan, but the character George Hamilton played was pretty good, because you didn't really know his character well enough to get the feeling that you could trust him as one of Michael's people, which made a little more mysterious.
Eli Wallach's character is one of my favourite, I think he should have a lot of credit to this movie, he did a great performance.
Some say that Michael should have been killed in the scene where Mary dies. For me that would have ruined it, because seeing Michael die peacefully (kind of like his own father did) is great, because it makes him suffer more for his sins, to die old when his child died young, perfect punishment.
To grade this movie, I would give it 8 out of 10.