This past weekend Marcia and I finished “The Godfather Trilogy” by watching “The Godfather, Part II” and “The Godfather, Part III”, which was over six hours combined.
I am not going to go into details of what the plots are. Most know, given the popularity of them, or you can guess, given who it deals with. The stories sometimes are complicated, given that you are trying to figure out where everyone stands and how they are involved, and what they have to gain. But it makes for good drama regardless.
The hardest thing was getting past Al Pacino in the third movie. His voice has changed over the years, and with the hair style he is employing, he skimming the edge of that parody I spoke of earlier. But he still keeps a good calm that Michael has in the earlier movies.
Andy Garcia was a good selection too for the third movie. Sophia Coppola as Mary however wasn’t all that great. She’s not bad, but she’s had two great outings as a director (”The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost in Translation”), so she should keep following her father’s footsteps.
Getting to know more of the background of Vito in flashback sections of Part II was very cool. Robert DiNero did, I thought, a very good job trying to mimic Brando’s delivery. It’s funny that both won Oscars for playing the same character.
The ending of Part III was the real kicker. I never expected to end in such a manner, and I applaud Coppola and Puzo for doing it the way they did. It’s realistic, even if terribly sad and very eerie. In some ways it seems odd with the last 30 seconds of the film to end the whole story of Michael, but it lends well to the nature of what has progressed.
The three movies are truly classics, even if a bit flawed at times.
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