Give me a break

Rating: Null/10 (9 January 2002)

I'm tired of reading and hearing people bashing Godfather III. I don't consider it as good as the first two, which are both a 10+ on a scale from 1 to 10, making I & II a hard act to follow.
Godfather III was a really good sequel. The acting was great if not solid all the way around. I only think Sofia Coppola was miscast and it would've been awesome to have Winona Ryder as planned. Andy Garcia did a really good job as Vincent. George Hamilton was solid as BJ Harrison, Tom Hagen's replacement.
My problem with III is that it seems to much time has passed. I would've preferred a storyline, like part 1, that goes on for several years simply because the character of Michael seems to be Michael only in name. I would've preferred more of a transition from the "evil" Michael in II to the one we see in III. I did enjoy that Michael was busting his butt trying to go legit because it was what he wanted in Part 1 and time was running out.
Someone mentioned that it was hard to believe that Michael would leave the family in the hands of a hot-head like Vincent, which I can understand. However, I think they did a fairly decent job of showing scenes in which Michael was teaching Vincent the ropes. It also didn't help that Anthony, Michael's son, didn't want anything to do with the family business.

About the only thing that really bothered me about III is the lack of closure it gave the very important character of Tom Hagen. I missed Robert Duvall big time. All in all, I think III is a well-crafted sequel that is extremely good in its own right. Never mind that pretentious notion that true Godfather fans pretend III doesn't exist. If III is hard to watch, it's only because it's sad that there probably won't be more Godfather films coming and the film shows the characters we loved so much in the twilight of their years.