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The Godfather Part III

Follows Michael Corleone, now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire. Follows Michael Corleone, now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire. Follows Michael Corleone, now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire.

Francis Ford Coppola
Diane Keaton
Andy Garcia
863 User reviews
144 Critic reviews
60 Metascore
6 wins & 23 nominations total

Michael Corleone

Vincent Mancini

Connie Corleone Rizzi

Don Altobello

B.J. Harrison

Grace Hamilton

Mary Corleone

Cardinal Lamberto

Anthony Corleone

Archbishop Gilday

Frederick Keinszig

Dominic Abbandando

Andrew Hagen

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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia Al Pacino was offered $5 million to reprise his role as Michael. But Pacino wanted $7 million plus a percentage of the gross. Francis Ford Coppola refused. He threatened to rewrite the script by starting the story with Michael's funeral sequence instead of the film's introduction. Pacino agreed to the $5 million offer.
Goofs When Cardinal Lamberto hears Michael Corleone's confession, he is not wearing the purple stole all priests wear during the sacrament. There is no reason why he wouldn't have one, since all priests carry one on their person at all times in case of emergency (such as giving absolution during last rites).

Michael Corleone : Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.

Crazy credits The original theatrical and home entertainment releases had the 1987 Paramount Pictures logo with the 1989 Paramount Communications byline, the pre-2020 Blu-Ray releases meanwhile had the 2002 Paramount logo with the 1995 Viacom byline tinted in sepia, and the post-2020 home entertainment releases and current streaming releases had the current Paramount logo with 2020 ViacomCBS byline.
New scene of Michael giving Anthony the drawing form part II (32s).
Connections Edited into The Godfather Trilogy: 1901-1980 (1992)
Soundtracks To Each His Own Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans Performed by Al Martino

User reviews 863

lesleyharris30
Jul 31, 2013
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December 25, 1990 (United States)
United States
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The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone
Mare Chiaro bar "Toni's nut house", 179 Mulberry street, Little Italy, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (Actual owner Toni sat in background smoking cigar as always..)
Paramount Pictures
Zoetrope Studios
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$54,000,000 (estimated)
$66,761,392
Dec 25, 1990
$136,861,392

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 42 minutes
Dolby Stereo
Dolby Digital

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Newly Re-Edited, “The Godfather: Part III” Is the Masterpiece It Already Was

By Richard Brody

A man and woman sensuously embrace in a restaurant kitchen.

There’s a Serbian proverb that an idled priest would baptize goats; Francis Ford Coppola , whose formidable artistry has unfortunately not been channelled toward making a new movie for quite a while, is instead turning back to tinker with his earlier work. He did so last year with “Apocalypse Now” and has now done so again, to greater effect, with “The Godfather: Part III.” It’s back, in his new cut (available digitally and on Blu-ray) under the heavy-duty new title “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” The re-edited version is a puckish paradox: it is only slightly different from the original—yet, now, this movie, which was widely derided at the time of its release, in 1990, is being acclaimed by a (mainly) new generation of critics, even if not quite as the masterwork that some of us knew it to be from the start.

As a reminder, “The Godfather: Part II” ended with Michael (Al Pacino) supreme, guilt-ridden, and alone atop the Corleone empire of crime, which he resolves to leave and go straight. In “Part III,” Michael, having divested himself of his criminal enterprises, makes a six-hundred-million-dollar “contribution” to cover up the Vatican Bank’s losses in exchange for a promise to head the Vatican’s vastly lucrative international real-estate business. His son, Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), defies him to become an opera singer; his daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola), who runs his entirely legitimate family foundation, falls in love with the hotheaded gangster Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), her first cousin. (He’s the illegitimate son of Michael’s late brother Sonny.) Vincent’s conflict with a local Mafia capo, Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), leads to a Mob war that threatens the Corleones, forcing Michael to retake bloody control of the crime family. Meanwhile, Michael’s promised Vatican enterprise is threatened by the Vatican’s internal political chicanery—which turns out to be equally dominated by the Mafia—and the two webs of criminal conflict get tangled up in a colossal and horrific maelstrom of violence.

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In the new version, the story is identical; so, for that matter, are its emphases. The main changes to the film are seen at the beginning, where Coppola has eliminated the sumptuous papal knighting of Michael and replaced it with an in-chambers discussion between Michael and Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), which sets the quid pro quo of his “contribution.” In the middle of the film, Coppola has eliminated a brief scene between Michael and the aged Don Altobello (Eli Wallach). The one emotionally and dramatically significant re-edit is to the movie’s very ending—we’ll get to that. Yet over all, these edits are inconsequential both for the plot or the affect of “The Godfather: Part III,” and it’s hard to imagine why a viewer who disliked the film in its original version would be moved to enthusiasm by the new one, or why anyone who admired the original would be disappointed by the recut. The real story of the reissue and restoration of “Part III” is, rather, why the film was received so poorly in 1990 and why, now, with negligible adjustments, its time has come.

There’s a carefully parsed opulence to Coppola’s direction of “Part III”; the film’s tautly controlled turbulence guides the eye to salient details, its clarified lines of dramatic tension calmly burst into images of an explosive yet nearly static intensity. I’m haunted by several key moments in the film (both versions): Michael looming over Joey Zasa in their first backroom confrontation; the quietly fiery intimacy between Mary and Vincent in a restaurant-kitchen scene; the deadly exchange of glances between Mary and Michael after Vincent pushes her away on his orders; the gory ingenuity of an attempted bedroom hit on Vincent; the audacious staging of another gory scene, of a big Mob hit in a ballroom; and, above all, the kitchen scene in which Michael keeps his cool about the killings but delivers, with heat, the single greatest line in the whole “Godfather” cycle, an enduring bit of existential poetry: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Coppola had made other films in between “Part II” and “Part III” that are far ahead of where he’d been at the time of the early-seventies diptych—in particular, “ One from the Heart ,” “ Tucker: The Man and His Dream ,” and “Rumble Fish.” They weren’t commercially successful (and he had sunk his own money into “One from the Heart,” which was both thrillingly original and a box-office disaster). In his subsequent career to date, Coppola has had only one other flare of such audacious and original directorial accomplishment, the absurd and glorious image-frenzy of the film he made after “Part III,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” from 1992, which may also have been the last best flourish of practical, optical, scenographic effects, just ahead of the C.G.I. revolution. By contrast,“The Godfather: Part III” is directed quite as well as the first two films in the series—no differently and no better, which is a terrible thing to say about a sixteen-year span in the career of a great filmmaker. On the other hand, the stylistic continuity among the three installments is one of the reasons for “Part III” ’s belated acclaim, now, with its reissue. The kind of romantic classicism that Coppola’s grandiose and meticulous style embodies—along with its conspicuous professionalism—is very much in vogue now, owing both to nostalgia for a time, so recent yet so distant, when Hollywood made such substantial movies on such high budgets, and to the generalized shift (at a time when a mere foothold on stability in the arts is woefully rare) from idealizing the struggling outsider to hailing the insider who has found or forged a place in the world.

The difference between “Part III” and the first two films isn’t in style; it’s that, with the third film, Coppola was passionately interested in his subject. The first two “Godfathers,” made during the age of the Vietnam War and Watergate, reflect a generalized recognition that American self-congratulatory mythology was a hollow veneer; they tore away the veil of civic virtue to show that gangsters are us, that corporate power and Mafia power were indissociable. In “Part III,” Coppola did with and to the Catholic Church what he’d previously done with and to American mythology. Where “Part I” and “Part II” tapped into a general Zeitgeist of disillusionment (which accounts significantly for its success), “Part III,” though a box-office success, is a much more personal film, with a political and emotional engine that is Coppola’s alone. In “Part III,” Coppola challenges the religion in which he was raised; he confronts the rituals of the Church, the hierarchy on which it depends, the virtual cult of personality—running in a chain from the parish priest to the archbishop to the Pope—on which it is based, and even the Church’s very notion of a mediated relationship to God. (It’s no coincidence that the movie’s voice of conscience is Michael’s ex-wife, Kay, the daughter of a Baptist minister; she’s played by Diane Keaton.) The movie is an audacious, self-scourging drama of a crisis of faith.

The movie’s theological passion is inseparable from another, obviously personal aspect of the film, one that’s too painful and intimate even to discuss in detail: the crucial dramatization (spoiler alert!) of the death of a child and of the guilt that comes with a parent’s grief. It’s a horror that Coppola and his wife, the writer and filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, endured, with the death of their son Gian-Carlo, in a boating accident, in 1986; what’s more, Gian-Carlo had been part of the family business, working with Francis Ford Coppola on the production of “Gardens of Stone” at the time of his death. The death of Mary is “Part III” ’s climactic incident, its tragic culmination—but the role of Mary, played by Coppola’s daughter, Sofia, who was nineteen years old and a nonprofessional actor, was the focus of critical hostility toward the movie at the time of its release.

Sofia had appeared in bit parts in many of her father’s previous films but never in a major dramatic role. In “Part III,” she was called on at the last minute to replace one of the most acclaimed young actors of the time, Winona Ryder, who withdrew from the role of Mary because of illness. Sofia Coppola’s performance was wrongly, absurdly, frenetically reviled by many critics at the time of the film’s release (though not by Pauline Kael , who wrote, in The New Yorker , that Coppola “has a lovely and unusual presence; she gives the film a breath of life” and added, “I grew to like her.”) Her tremulously expressive performance, which seemed so idiosyncratically low-key and indeed unusual, comes off now as utterly contemporary, in the same vein as the younger generation of actors who have populated Sofia Coppola’s own films and many low-budget independent films of the past decade.

The dreadful scene of Mary’s death moves swiftly to the ending of “Part III,” and that ending, in “The Godfather, Coda,” is indeed radically—yet infinitesimally—different. Despite the new title of the new version, Michael doesn’t die. The aged Michael, sitting alone in his garden in Sicily, doesn’t keel over; instead, he is condemned to live—and to remember—as a newly added title card explains, with wry and bitter irony, that “a Sicilian never forgets.” (Moreover, in the original, flashbacks show the aged Michael recalling Mary and his other loves in their youth, including Kay and his first wife, Apollonia; in the recut, his thoughts are only of Mary.) In 1990, with “Part III,” Coppola, barely in his fifties, imagined the consolation and the deliverance of death, and endured a cinematic terror that played like his “To be or not to be” moment, his confrontation with the horrific prospect that death would nonetheless be no relief. Now, thirty years later, Michael is cursed with a long life—and has borne the long sentence of too much time on his hands, too much time to fill with one tormenting memory. Coppola has remade the ending to fold himself back, agonizingly, into the very substance of the film.

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‘The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone’ Is a Chance to Revisit a Film That Didn’t Deserve Its Brickbats

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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This past summer, I happened to watch “ The Godfather Part III ” again. At the time, it wasn’t known that Francis Ford Coppola was preparing a new version of the movie, one that would be retitled “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.” It’s probably a good thing that Coppola hasn’t decided to retitle any of his other films. (“Apocalypse, Now and Then: The Cracking Up of Col. Kurtz” doesn’t have the same ring.) Nevertheless, the cumbersome title of “The Godfather, Coda” does provoke one’s curiosity. It makes the movie sound like a different animal from what it was before. (It opens in a handful of theaters today and will be available On Demand and Blu-ray starting Dec. 8.)

The reason I’d gone back to “Godfather III” is that it’s a movie I’d always wanted to revisit and never had. In 1990, I was one of the few American critics who liked it. Writing in Entertainment Weekly, I said, “‘The Godfather Part III’ isn’t the overpoweringly great movie the first ‘Godfather’ was (let’s be reasonable — how could it have been?), and it lacks the bone-chilling gradations of darkness that made ‘The Godfather Part II’ a singular American tragedy. This one is slower, talkier, and more prosaic: two hours of exposition and 40 minutes of payoff. What’s more, its narrative seams sometimes show. Yet by the end, the movie has attained a deep-grained emotional grandeur that can hold its own with that of the other two films.”

I think that’s a tad overstated, but I stand by it. Thirty years after its release, the flaws of “The Godfather Part III” are just as pronounced. The storytelling, at times, is slipshod and arbitrary. (Joe Mantegna’s Joey Zasa first seems a minor-league mobster, then he’s a showboating celebrity kingpin. And why would Michael, now bent on respectability, object to his son becoming an opera singer?) What’s more, there’s a detail in the movie that’s so wrong it jars me in almost every scene. I’m talking about Michael Corleone’s hair. I can certainly imagine that Al Pacino , in the early ’90s, might have shown up on the red carpet sporting a thatchy salt-and-pepper bristle cut. But Michael Corleone? At the age of 50, he would never have abandoned his old-school Italian coif, the hair oiled straight back (just like his father’s), which gave him the look of a mobster cobra. In “Godfather III,” we have to buy that Michael, in the years leading up to 1979, has undergone a change — that in his cold dark staring way he has softened and is looking for redemption. I can go with that. Yet the fact that he walks around looking like the Godfather of Beverly Hills is a trivial but revealing indication that Coppola had misplaced his former mastery of detail.

That said, “The Godfather Part III” gathers force as it goes along. It’s a movie that can sweep you up if you let it. One of the criticisms at the time I passionately disagreed with was the collective attack on Sofia Coppola’s performance. It was obvious that she wasn’t a trained actress, yet her ripe sensuality and slightly dazed ordinary-girl inflections had a vividness that came across as authentic. The movie was saying that this — a girl who was clearly a product of the media age — is what a mobster’s daughter might look like. The dangerous romantic spark between Mary and Andy Garcia’s hotheaded Vincent is one of the most potent things in the movie, and the flow of feeling between Sofia Coppola and Pacino felt deep and true. It always struck me that what was being attacked, at the time, was the nepotism of the casting: the fact that Coppola was born to Hollywood royalty and had landed in this movie. What happened is that she showed up and gave a technically unpolished, emotionally alive performance, and for that crime she was bashed like a Kardashian on Twitter.

Okay, enough about that. How is “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone”? (God, I just love saying that title.) Here’s the news and the ever-so-slight scandal: It’s the same damn movie . I’m not exaggerating; it really is. The one impactful change is the new opening scene. The film now begins with the let’s-make-a-deal negotiation between Michael and Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), the weasel who heads the Vatican Bank, in which Michael agrees to pay the Vatican $600 million in exchange for the right to become the controlling shareholder of Immobiliare, an international real-estate consortium. Taking that scene, which previously came about half an hour in, and moving it to the front gives the film a kick-start, and it clarifies the underworld-meets-Catholic-Church corporate-business plot that didn’t actually need clarifying.

Once that happens, the movie proceeds along in exactly the same way it did before, except that Coppola has made about five minutes’ worth of trims. (The original running time was 162 minutes; it’s now 157 minutes.) The only ones I noticed were, frankly, moments I wish were still there: those involving the character of Don Altobello (Eli Wallach), the ancient Mafioso who’s the godfather of Connie Corleone (Talia Shire), a warm family connection that only masks his treachery. I’d never say that this is my favorite Eli Wallach performance (he lays on the cooing and grinning a bit thick), yet his invisible sinister aura helps to sync the movie’s tone to that of the previous “Godfather” films.

The only other change comes at the very end. The original film concluded with Michael, now an old man in Sicily, seated on his chair in the sun, then he slumps over and dies. It was staged as a direct homage to Vito Corleone’s death scene in “The Godfather,” and it wasn’t really necessary. The new ending, in which Michael is seated in that same chair in the sun, only now he doesn’t die, probably improves on the old one. Yet the point that’s being made — that the “death of Michael Corleone” isn’t literal, it’s his spiritual death, the result of his having killed not only his brother Fredo but, indirectly, his own child — is a message that was already there, front and center. Pacino’s acting in the confession scene is still haunting ( “I killed my mother’s son, I killed my father’s son…” ), and that’s the fateful power of “The Godfather Part III”: that Michael, even in his quest for redemption, ends up getting the punishment he deserves. The last scene was always a brief unnecessary coda. Now it’s a slightly better unnecessary coda.

If I sound dismissive, that may be because I have little respect for Francis Ford Coppola’s obsession with tinkering with his own films. His willingness, in 1977 (when he was desperate to finance “Apocalypse Now”), to mash the first two “Godfather” films together into “The Godfather Saga,” putting all 7 hours and 14 minutes of it in chronological order, always struck me as the director’s-cut version of a kind of OCD, a move that wound up tarnishing one of the most extraordinary American films ever made: “The Godfather Part II.” For, of course, part of the primal power of that movie is the cross-cutting between the ice-hearted saga of Michael Corleone and the story of how his father, Vito, played by Robert De Niro, first rose to power as an Italian immigrant in New York. The meaning, the very essence of the film, is there in that cross-generational double story: the father, an honorable man, descending into the underworld because that’s the only way he feels he can gain a foothold in his new country; the son, born into power, losing his own honor through his need for absolute control. To think that putting all of that in “proper” order was somehow acceptable indicated that Coppola had lost his inner compass as a filmmaker.

“The Godfather, Coda” isn’t that kind of misstep. And I salute Coppola’s decision to put the movie back out there. I hope that a lot of people revisit it (or discover it for the first time), using that word “coda” as a key — for, of course, “The Godfather Part III” always was an extended coda to what is arguably the greatest epic saga in the history of American cinema. The first two “Godfather” films still speak to us as few other movies do. They’re our great national opera of family, crime, love, loss, corruption, power, and tragedy. If you watch “The Godfather, Coda,” you’ll see one of the last moments when Coppola’s filmmaking bravura was in full flower, and that’s the opera assassination sequence at the end. It’s exquisitely done (my favorite shot: the one where the man who’s been hired to kill Michael poses as a corpse), staged with a cutting yet tranquil rhythm that’s pure Coppola. And the scene that takes place afterward, on the steps outside, is the ending, wrapped in a silent scream of anguish, that this series always deserved. With “The Godfather, Coda,” let the tinkering be done. But I urge you to seek the movie out, because it truly does touch the grandeur of the first two films. Even if it can’t match it.

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‘the godfather: part iii’: thr’s 1990 review.

On Dec. 20, 1990, Francis Ford Coppola unveiled the conclusion to his mafia trilogy at its Beverly Hills premiere.

By Duane Byrge

Duane Byrge

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On Dec. 20, 1990, Francis Ford Coppola unveiled The Godfather: Part III at its premiere at the Academy Theater in Beverly Hills. The film went on to gross $136 million globally and nab seven Oscar nominations at the 63rd Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

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Review/Film; The Corleones Try to Go Straight In 'The Godfather Part III'

By Janet Maslin

Dec. 25, 1990

"The Godfather Part III," a valid and deeply moving continuation of the Corleone family saga, daringly holds forth the possibility of redemption. For Michael Corleone, now a tired, conscience-stricken patriarch, that means the chance to transcend the bloody sins that the first two "Godfather" films chronicled so unforgettably. For Francis Ford Coppola, who is back on familiar territory after many failures, noble and otherwise, it means the opportunity to regain a career's lost luster.

With Mr. Coppola's stately, ceremonious new "Godfather" epic, each of these men comes tantalizingly close to reversing his fortune. Of the two, Mr. Coppola comes closer.

Even now, Mr. Coppola apparently believes that the "Godfather" films are routine and unimaginative efforts by comparison with his flightier, more idiosyncratic pet projects (among them "Rumble Fish" and "One From the Heart"). That attitude is effectively a saving grace. It has allowed the "Godfather" films, including this one, to be grandly, improbably majestic yet also mercifully free of self-importance. They remain Mr. Coppola's best work.

"The Godfather Part III" picks up 20 years after "Part II" left off without missing a beat. One of this film's greatest accomplishments is its making an audience believe that the Corleones and their various partners in crime have been entirely in character during the intervening decades, but have simply neglected to turn up on screen.

Countless small, fascinating threads of continuity help sustain this illusion, from the similar pacing, staging and camera work to the presence of many familiar faces in the crowd. The bridesmaid (Jeannie Linero) who had a quick tryst with Sonny Corleone in the first film, for example, now makes a brief and unremarked-upon appearance here as the mother of hot-blooded young Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), the Godfather of the future.

"The Godfather Part III," more frankly, mournfully operatic than its predecessors, is as haunted as a film about living characters can be. Casting the aging Michael in a Lear-like light, as a fading monarch worried about his children and the fate of his empire, it pointedly recalls the many losses in Michael's past (in this family-centered tragedy, there are echoes of Mr. Coppola's own history as well). Tempered by regret, Michael is now a much more fully drawn character than he had been, and Mr. Pacino's mesmerizing performance embodies many new shadings. The older Michael has lost none of his ruthlessness, but his confidence is shaky at times; so is his steely composure. More openly sentimental than before, Michael is now even capable of a fatherly twinkle or two.

The object of his affection is his daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola), the coquettish head of the Corleone family's charitable foundation. The family's drive toward respectability now means at least one lavish Corleone Pavilion at a New York hospital, a Fifth Avenue address for Michael and a gift of $100 million from the Corleones to the poor of Sicily, presented by Mary during the extravagant opening party sequence that celebrates Michael's having received an important Papal honor. "Don't spend it all in one place," giggles Mary, to the calculating archbishop (Donal Donnelly) who receives the check.

Ms. Coppola, the director's daughter, gives a flat, uneasy performance that seriously damages Mary's impact as the linchpin of this story. The role is small, but Mary is meant to affect several of the other principals in heart-stopping ways, and Ms. Coppola's uncertain presence does little but call attention to strenuous compensatory acting on the parts of her co-stars. Mr. Pacino, Mr. Garcia and Diane Keaton as Kay, Mary's mother, are fortunately able to pick up much of the slack. And the film's ultimate use of Mary does give this faulty casting an unexpected poignancy. Mr. Coppola's brand of nepotism is more thoughtful than most.

The nominal focus of the new film is the Vatican, which has become the center of Michael's most grandiose hopes for fiscal if not spiritual legitimacy. The screenplay, by Mr. Coppola and Mario Puzo, concocts a scheme by which Michael hopes to acquire a major interest in International Immobiliare, a consortium of Catholic businessmen under the control of the Vatican bank. This will complete the Corleones' abandonment of their criminal interests, which have been transferred to Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), a dapper and dangerous hood. The plotting of this risks becoming too intricate but, in the end, it is fundamentally clear.

Michael's sleeker new style calls for associates like his investment lawyer (George Hamilton, well used as a slicker version of Robert Duvall's now-absent Tom Hagen) and his public relations man (Don Novello). When the latter, handing out press kits celebrating Michael's new Papal medal, is asked by a reporter about Michael's criminal past, he snaps, "You think you know better than the Pope?"

Borrowing loosely from conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I, the film systematically traps Michael between these new ambitions and the legacy of his past. "Just when I thought I was out , they pull me back in! " he bellows, in a domestic scene that becomes so impassioned Mr. Coppola dares to throw in stage lightning -- and gets away with it. At such moments "The Godfather Part III" has a more histrionic pitch than its predecessors, even allowing Michael a vital soliloquy that will seal his fate.

The film's most frankly melodramatic segment is a half-hour showpiece, a spectacular opera house finale intercutting several different acts of revenge. Mr. Coppola's deliberate invocation of the earlier "Godfather" dramas, here and elsewhere throughout the new film, adds gravity without succumbing to the perils of repetition. The new film has more than enough character of its own.

Among the new film's outstanding sequences are a garish shootout in Atlantic City, a scene in which Michael unexpectedly feels moved to make his confession to a kindly cardinal (Raf Vallone), a rapprochement between Michael and Kay, a gangland hit at a parade in New York City, and of course the numerous boardroom meetings, clandestine planning sessions and family festivities that give the "Godfather" films their particular brio. Again, Gordon Willis's majestically dark-hued cinematography casts a powerful spell over these goings-on, and Dean Tavoularis's production design enhances their persuasiveness. Milena Canonero's striking yet subtle costumes give the new film an added flair.

The enormous cast also includes Eli Wallach as a crafty and unctuous old don, Talia Shire as a newly power-wielding Connie Corleone, Enzo Robutti and Vittorio Duse as two formidable figures in the film's lush Sicilian scenes, and Bridget Fonda as a photojournalist who is quick to grasp the appeal of Mr. Garcia's dashing Vincent. She will not be alone. Mr. Garcia's high-voltage performance, a witty echo of James Caan's Sonny Corleone but also sure and sexy in its own right, not only insures him a bright future but suggests that the series may have one as well.

Some caveats: the dramatic deep focus of the earlier "Godfathers" -- the way in which even minor characters seemed substantial figures with long, lively histories -- is not quite aspronounced this time. And certain associations, like the frequent visual link between religious statuary and a shootout in the offing, have become more reflexive and less fresh. The film's ending is shockingly abrupt. A grace note is somehow missing.

The screenplay itself is at some moments glaringly broad, as when Michael's son, Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio), arrives in Sicily and asks, "Why is such a beautiful country . . . so violent?" At other times, though, the dialogue can be wonderfully droll. Early in the story, Anthony refuses to go to work for his father because of "bad memories." "Every family has bad memories!" Michael cries in protest. Maybe so. Not like this.

Most film sequels are strictly optional. "The Godfather Part III" is inevitable, and as such it's irresistible.

"The Godfather Part III" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes brief nudity and graphic violence. The Godfather Part III Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; written by Mario Puzo and Mr. Coppola; director of photography, Gordon Willis; edited by Barry Malkin, Lisa Fruchtman and Walter Murch; music by Carmine Coppola; production designer, Dean Tavoularis; produced by Francis Ford Coppola; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 161 minutes. This film is rated R. Michael Corleone . . . Al Pacino Kay Adams . . . Diane Keaton Connie Corleone Rizzi . . . Talia Shire Vincent Mancini . . . Andy Garcia Don Altobello . . . Eli Wallach Joey Zasa . . . Joe Mantegna B. J. Harrison . . . George Hamilton Grace Hamilton . . . Bridget Fonda Mary Corleone . . . Sofia Coppola Cardinal Lamberto . . . Raf Vallone Anthony Corleone . . . Franc D'Ambrosio Archbishop Gilday . . . Donal Donnelly Dominic Abbandando . . . Don Novello Don Tommasino . . . Vittorio Duse Licio Lucchesi . . . Enzo Robutti Lucy Mancini . . . Jeannie Linero

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The Godfather: Part III

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Few sequels can match the charge of anticipation you feel before watching the third part of Francis Ford Coppola ‘s Godfather series. The first two parts – released in 1972 and 1974 – won Oscars as Best Picture and rank as the twin peaks of Mob movies. The lives of Don Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando and then Robert De Niro) and his children – Michael ( Al Pacino ), Fredo (John Cazale), Sonny (James Caan) and Connie (Talia Shire) – have become the stuff of movie legend. Seeing a Godfather film isn’t business as usual. It’s personal.

So when it sinks in that this nearly three-hour sequel is not up to the level of its predecessors, the disappointment runs deep. Is Part III worth your time? Of course. It’s still The Godfather, and some of it is deeply affecting. Coppola is trying to create a Shakespearean tragedy on the order of King Lear. The time is 1979, and Pacino’s Michael Corleone, diabetic and pushing sixty, is a don about to surrender his fiefdom. He’s dumping his illegal operations and trying to go legit through a business deal with the Vatican Bank.

With its violent betrayals, The Godfather always had the trappings of opera and classical drama. And there’s something else – a coarse vitality owing to the 1969 bestseller by Mario Puzo on which the films were based. It was Coppola as director and co-writer (with Puzo) who turned a pulp novel into an authentic epic. Moving from Sicily to America, from 1901 to 1959, he used the corruption of one immigrant family to expose the moral rot infecting America. Coppola embraced the vulgarity of this Mafia saga as well as its graver implications. He never lost sight of the story as popular entertainment. Until now.

Things start appropriately with another Corleone family ceremony. Michael is being honored by the Catholic church for his charitable donations. At a reception, he’s confronted by his ex-wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), now married to a judge. Kay begs him to let their son, Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), become an opera singer instead of a lawyer. Michael reluctantly agrees. He becomes more worried when their other child, Mary, played by the director’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Sofia Coppola, falls in love with her cousin Vincent (Andy Garcia), the bastard son of Michael’s late brother Sonny.

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The newcomers at the reception include ambitious gangster Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), sly Don Altobello (Eli Wallach), financial advisor B.J. Harrison (George Hamilton), conniving Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly) and sexy reporter Grace Hamilton (Bridget Fonda), who comes to interview Michael but ends up in bed with Vincent.

It’s a promising setup, richly shot by Godfather veteran Gordon Willis. But Coppola has been negligent with the script. Vital connections between the characters have been left out. In the first two films, Coppola masterfully drew characters in a few broad strokes. Not this time. Keaton looks frozen; Fonda shows only her body; and Hamilton shows only his tan. John Savage is introduced as the late consigliere Tom Hagen’s son, a priest, and then ignored. Mantegna hams winningly and Wallach outrageously, but they’re plot devices, not people.

Coppola dawdles for eternities over the financial chicanery with the Vatican. And he isn’t up to snuff on the action, either. An attack on a Mob meeting in Atlantic City has violence but no vigor. And the climactic set piece – Anthony’s debut at the Palermo opera house, intercut with an assassination attempt and numerous acts of violence – is overly reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Man Who Knew Too Much. Coppola’s heart isn’t in the business or the bloodletting.

Where is his heart then? With Michael. Coppola has never made a secret of his affinity with Don Vito’s youngest son. With his string of flops and financial woes, Coppola knows how it feels to be royalty on the ropes. It’s odd to see Pacino, so effectively recessive in the earlier films, fulminating about his fate (his histrionics occasionally remind you of his performance as Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy ). But Pacino’s acting grows in force, especially when Michael, confessing his sins, admits that he ordered his brother Fredo killed. As the plot runs its course, Michael loses another person close to him, once again highlighting the connection between Michael and Coppola, who lost a son in a boating accident in 1986. It’s no accident that a sense of grief pervades the film.

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After Anthony rejects the family business, Michael takes in Vincent as a son. Garcia’s turbulent and tender performance is the movie’s freshest surprise, and the scene in which Michael anoints him as the new don is the film’s most arresting. It’s Vincent’s love for his cousin Mary that threatens to drive the men apart. Mary represents innocence for Coppola, as she does for Michael and Vincent. Concepts are notoriously hard to play, and Sofia Coppola wages a painful and futile battle with this one. She looks right, though her face doesn’t open up to the camera, but she lacks the experience to give the role weight.

Coppola has narrowed the focus of the story without being able to reduce the film’s large scale. The public and the studio expect an epic, but Coppola has lost interest in providing one. There’s a void where action, characterization, humor and invention used to be. Eventually, Michael shuts out the world; tragedy sucks the life out of the old warrior. And Coppola’s identification with him is total. It’s no wonder the movie leaves a dark chill. The Godfather Part III feels as if it were written and directed by Michael Corleone.

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The Godfather

1972, Crime/Drama, 2h 57m

What to know

Critics Consensus

One of Hollywood's greatest critical and commercial successes, The Godfather gets everything right; not only did the movie transcend expectations, it established new benchmarks for American cinema. Read critic reviews

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Watch The Godfather with a subscription on Apple TV+, Peacock, Paramount+, rent on Apple TV, Vudu, Prime Video, or buy on Apple TV, Vudu, Prime Video.

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The godfather videos, the godfather photos.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, this mob drama, based on Mario Puzo's novel of the same name, focuses on the powerful Italian-American crime family of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). When the don's youngest son, Michael (Al Pacino), reluctantly joins the Mafia, he becomes involved in the inevitable cycle of violence and betrayal. Although Michael tries to maintain a normal relationship with his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), he is drawn deeper into the family business.

Genre: Crime, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Producer: Albert S. Ruddy

Writer: Francis Ford Coppola , Mario Puzo , Mario Puzo

Release Date (Theaters): Mar 15, 1972 wide

Rerelease Date (Theaters): Feb 25, 2022

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 1, 2013

Box Office (Gross USA): $134.8M

Runtime: 2h 57m

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Production Co: Paramount Pictures

Sound Mix: Mono

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

Cast & Crew

Marlon Brando

Don Vito Corleone

Michael Corleone

Santino "Sonny" Corleone

Richard S. Castellano

Pete Clemenza

Robert Duvall

Sterling Hayden

Police Captain McCluskey

John Marley

Richard Conte

Don Emilio Barzini

Diane Keaton

Kay Adams Corleone

Al Lettieri

Sollozzo "The Turk"

Talia Shire

Constanzia "Connie" Corleone Rizzi

Gianni Russo

Carlo Rizzi

John Cazale

Federico "Fredo" Corleone

Ottilio Cuneo

Johnny Fontane

Morgana King

Carmela Corleone

Lenny Montana

John Martino

Paulie Gatto

Richard Bright

Francis Ford Coppola

Gray Frederickson

Associate Producer

Albert S. Ruddy

Original Music

Gordon Willis

Cinematographer

Film Editing

Barbara Marks

William Reynolds

Murray Solomon

Peter Zinner

Dean Tavoularis

Production Design

Warren Clymer

Art Director

Philip Smith

Set Decoration

Anna Hill Johnstone

Costume Design

Philip Leto

Hair Stylist

Phil Rhodes

Makeup Artist

News & Interviews for The Godfather

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Critic Reviews for The Godfather

Audience reviews for the godfather.

I was roughly twenty years away from even being conceived when The Godfather came out. Growing up as a film nut, I often heard of The Godfather as possessing a sort of mythic status which few films made after 1955 possess. I first watched it back close to ten years ago as a 12 year old, never fully getting the story with the film falling into the "great film that I didn't appreciate" category until a month or so back when I got the Coppola restoration Blu-Ray and realized as an adult how fantastic of a film it truly was. The Godfather works so well because it isn't a film that kisses it's own ass on a variety of sub-levels. Francis Ford Coppola went out of his way not to make the film one that glorifies the Mafia in anyway, but still realized what a magnificent project it was. It begins in celebration and ends as the first part of the trilogy in bitter-sweet victory and tragedy for the Corleones with Michael having slowly morphed into a totally different character by the end and the Corleone family itself having endured tragedy after tragedy. Depending on if you're selective to certain genres of movies -- particularly crime and heist thrillers -- the 1970s were either a fantastic time with the New Hollywood group of directors, or a pitiful time where the Anti-Hero was all the rage. I've always tried to keep a foot in both camps for the most part, but if a film like this doesn't make you at least sit there as the credits role, musing in thought like Indiana Jones after being given a clue by a recently-killed shaman or anti-Nazi spy the first time you watch it, then I'm not sure you really know how to appreciate films and movies as art and not just entertainment. There's so many ways this film just works so well; the first is that Coppola always had a way of making the cinematography and direction style look both extravagant, but also bleak at the same time, partially through sun-faded cinematography (I'm just guessing) and also partially through the way the film itself was shot. As well as the fact that Coppola spared nothing when it came to deploying talented screen stars of the day to cast The Godfather, leading Marlon Brando to find international success once more with his portrayal of Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as the reluctant, but eventual successor to his father Vito, Michael Corleone, Diane Keaton as Kay Adams, Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen, and of course, a pre-Rocky Talia Shire as Connie Corleone. These cast members in particular stand out in their performances and convey a sort of detached emotion which makes the film so great (if you need clarification on this, the scene where Vito overlooks his own son's body in the morgue is a prime example). Although it is by far the best instalment in the Godfather trilogy, the film itself does suffer from a few key points which I've never been able to reason out why they were included. Specifically the whole sequence involving Johnny Fontaine and the Woltz horse fiasco which has no real involvement in the over-arcing storyline. However with how spectacular of a film it is overall, I'm not going to sit here and bitch about it any further.

From it's stellar opening wedding scene to it's bittersweet conclusion, The Godfather is a groundbreaking and brilliantly made film that deals with themes of power, corruption and family with subtly and finesse. Easily one of the greatest movies ever made.

One of the best films of all time, an absolute masterpiece. The Godfather is arguably the best gangster drama as well as setting the standard for cinema.

Spectacular. Every time I see it, it gets better. From its flawless direction, to its exceptional score, to its (near-)flawless script, I have no doubt "The Godfather" is one of the best movies ever made.

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Godfather Part III, The (United States, 1990)

Eighteen years after the first screenings of The Godfather , the long-awaited third and final chapter reached theaters. That it proved unable to fulfill expectations was a predictable - if somewhat disheartening - result, given the sixteen year buildup The Godfather Part III is a good movie, with moments of rare power, but it is not a great one - a reason why many fans of the series have voiced their disappointment. Oscar nominations for this film were probably based more on the Godfather name and reputation than on the particular merits of this production. Part III became the first Godfather not to take best picture and, despite a deserving performance, Al Pacino's efforts were not acknowledged. The lack of awards enthusiasm perhaps reflected a general opinion.

The story opens in 1979 New York, some twenty years after Michael Corleone (Pacino) gave the order to have his older brother killed. His children Mary (Sofia Coppola) and Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio) are now grown. Mary is devoted to her father; Anthony is more wary. He loves Michael, but wants nothing to do with "the business", even though all illegal investments have been divested. The Corleone family is legitimate. As with the other two movies, this one begins with a family gathering. The occasion is the presentation to Michael of the Order of St. Sebastian - the highest honor the Catholic Church can bestow upon a layman. For a Corleone to receive it is the ultimate mark of respectability. Michael is not so easily free of his former underworld allies, however. When he makes a $600 million play for the international conglomerate Immobiliare, they want a piece of the cake, seeing an opportunity to launder their money. Michael's refusal at a meeting of dons stings more than a few of his old friends, and brings down a bloody retribution. The next Don Corleone - Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), Sonny Corleone's boy - is awaiting his opportunity. He possesses a ruthlessness and taste for violence that Michael has long since lost, and as the Immobiliare stakes escalate, the old head of the family recognizes the need for youth and strength. The passing of the baton, however, carries with it a tragic price.

One of the most obvious problems with The Godfather Part III is that it covers little new territory. The plot is highly derivative of the original. This time, Michael fills Vito's role, and Vincent stands in for Michael. This method of too-obvious parallelism might have been more effective had Vincent's character been better developed. That isn't the case, however, because Michael is still the focal point. As always, Pacino is a delight to watch. The third time around, he brings a mournful weariness to Michael Corleone. This is a man who has paid for all the wrong choices. Memories haunt him like ghosts that can never be exorcised. The emotional toll is shown in the stoop of his shoulders and the thickness of his voice. Family, as has ever been the case, is crucial to Michael. His children are his reason for living. In his words, "The only wealth in this world is children. More than all the money and power on Earth, [they] are my treasure." He says to Mary that he would burn in hell to keep her safe. It is a prophetic statement.

Robert Duvall is missed. It's impossible not to feel the vacuum created by his absence. George Hamilton's B.J. Barrison is a one-dimensional necessity of plot, not a "real" character. At least the decision was made not to replicate Tom Hagen in Barrison. Hamilton is given little more to do than stand in the background and speak a few lines. Another unfortunate casting decision was the choice of Sofia (daughter of Francis) Coppola as Mary (Winona Ryder, the director's preference, was prevented by fatigue from appearing). Coppola is pleasant enough to look at, but her range is limited, and that lack of ability diminishes several emotionally-charged scenes. This is the first Godfather to have a major role defined by a poor performance.

One thing that is not inferior, however, is Francis Ford Coppola's directorial flair. The final half-hour, with its interweaving of diverse-yet-related plot lines, is choreographed with the skill of a master. There are moments of The Godfather Part III that shine with the brilliance of the previous two films. Despite its missteps, The Godfather Part III packs enough of a punch to deserve a place alongside its predecessors. This is no poorly-conceived curiosity. Not only does the film bring Michael Corleone's story to a conclusion, but it remains faithful to the form and style of parts I and II. Taken as one grand epic, with this chapter included, the Godfather movies represent one of the most solid, emotionally-rich tales ever committed to film.

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THE GODFATHER PART III (1990) – Review by Pauline Kael

August 18, 2017

by Pauline Kael

At the end of The Godfather Part II (1974), the story was complete—beautifully complete. Francis Ford Coppola knew it, and for over a decade he resisted Paramount’s pleas for another sequel. But the studio’s blandishments became more honeyed, his piggy bank was smashed, and late in 1988 he had an illumination: he discovered how the story should be continued. Michael Corleone would be in his King Lear phase, with his empire slipping from his hands. Michael, he announced openly, without shame, was going through what he himself had been going through. In Coppola’s thinking, he had become his own tragic hero. (Mario Puzo, who wrote the 1969 novel on which the films were based, and collaborated with Coppola on the screenplays, held his tongue.) Most of the emotional force went out of Coppola’s moviemaking in the late nineteen-seventies, when he was working on Apocalypse Now , and it has never fully come back. Pictures such as One from the Heart , The Outsiders , Rumble Fish , Tucker , and The Cotton Club were preceded by so much buildup in the press that early audiences kept being stunned to find an empty shell of a movie. We’ve never had another director whose fall was so prolonged, or one who harangued the press so bitterly, blaming it for his burnout and his miscalculations. Coppola makes himself the issue. After each new film, he was so nakedly hurt and upset that you couldn’t help becoming involved in his pain. (For a while, he was Tucker, the victim of the big car companies.) By now, you can’t discuss his movies apart from discussing him—he’s made it impossible. He blames the press for that, too. Coppola has been licking his wounds publicly for over a decade. He’s turned his exhaustion and wound-licking into the subject of The Godfather Part III . Its emblem is the sagging face of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), the Godfather. In the first film, Michael became a killer for the sake of his family. (He treated it as his duty to kill his sister Connie’s treacherous husband.) In Godfather II we saw that it wasn’t family he cared about now—it was power. Predatory and vicious, he’d killed his poor weakling brother Fredo. He’d put himself beyond redemption, and at the end he had lost his wife Kay (Diane Keaton) and was alone with his two pampered children and Connie (Talia Shire). Yet in III we’re supposed to believe in a remorseful, basically good Michael Corleone. Twenty years have passed, and now he’s trying to give his family a good name and protect his daughter Mary’s innocence. (That is, he’s trying to keep her in ignorance of his murderous past.) He has moved the family wealth out of gambling and into banking and investments, but the other mobsters resent his climb toward respectability, and—here’s the tricky element—the higher he moves in international banking circles, the crookeder the action, and the more he is victimized. Godfather III is about worldwide corruption. Trying to put the Corleone family above reproach, Michael enters into negotiations with the Vatican; it has the standing to launder his money and his name. (That seems to be his way of expiating his crimes.) Michael, it turns out, is honorable compared with the big-time grandees who deal with the Vatican. It’s Michael who tries—and fails—to save the life of Pope John Paul (Raf Vallone); he is poisoned by the consortium of European financiers. (Since the movie is set in 1979 and 1980, Michael was doomed to failure; John Paul actually died in 1978.) The first two Godfather movies are peaks in our movie-going experience. In their combined seven and a half hours, they’re our gangster epic, our immigration epic, our national passion. They belong to us. So we care about this huge, ambitious new project; watching the sequences, we pull for Coppola, worrying about whether he’ll be able to bring them off. Lightning didn’t strike three times; the movie is lumbering. Yet I was relieved—I felt he could get by with it. It resembles the first two pictures, and there’s always something happening. I don’t think it’s going to be a public humiliation, and it’s too amorphous to damage our feelings about the first two. Godfather III feels as if it had been ripped from Coppola’s hands before he could shape it and finish it. That’s probably what happened; he may have needed two or three months longer, though chances are that if he had been given a year it would still be messy. This picture isn’t just unpolished and weakly scored; it lacks coherence. The internal force has vanished from his work, but you still expect some narrative flow; instead, he reaches for awesomeness. Trying to make a masterpiece, he resorts to operatic pyrotechnics that don’t come out of anything. Coppola chose to make The Outsiders in the style of Gone with the Wind ; he’s made Godfather III in the style of the earlier Godfather movies. But there’s no connection anymore between Coppola and this style. The sensibility is different; the quality of feeling—what gave the films their lyricism and made the public bond with them—is gone. In the first two Godfather pictures Coppola took opportunistic, sensationalist material and turned it into drama. In Godfather III you catch glimpses of news stories. Joe Mantegna, as the smooth-faced hood Joey Zasa, is like Joey Gallo dressed in John Gotti’s wardrobe, and the package deals with the Vatican recall the Sindona affair. But Coppola doesn’t transform the sensationalist material; he just presents it, with an aura of solemnity. Michael now lives in a New York penthouse and buys himself the Order of St. Sebastian by donating a hundred million dollars to the Vatican to distribute to the poor of Sicily. The amounts bandied about are trashily large: he agrees to hand the Vatican six hundred million dollars more, and is swindled. These transactions illustrate why Michael can’t go on as Godfather. The point appears to be that he was meant for something better. He’s grieving, and you get the sense that it’s not for the brother and brother-in-law he killed, or his first wife and his brother Sonny, whom others killed, or his dead parents; it’s for the lost possibilities in himself. The action doesn’t seem attached to anything, because Michael’s passions are spent and his thoughts are elsewhere. He wants out. Coppola might be saying, “I shouldn’t have to be doing this. I’ve already made this picture.” Al Pacino gives a good morose performance, with deep pouches under his eyes. He plays the role with fine professionalism, but it’s no longer a startling role, with hidden currents that suddenly come to the surface; it’s limited and monochromatic. Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen isn’t around, and he’s missed; Pacino has no one to play off. Michael doesn’t reveal himself with the old sneak of a don who pretends to be harmless (a too effusive performance by Eli Wallach) or with his lifelong henchman Al Neri (Richard Bright); he’s a silent, solitary figure, his body hunched over, his face a mask of lethargy. It’s a mistake, I think, to have given him no new sex partners and left him clinging nobly to his forlorn love for his ex-wife, Kay. It’s great to see Diane Keaton, but she has always seemed wasted in this poorly written role; now eons have passed, and Kay is still dropping bland moral judgments. She and everybody else keep telling Michael that they love him and forgive him—how much reassurance does Coppola need? After Michael’s son, Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), refuses to study law and goes off to become an opera singer, Michael takes on the training of his nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), his brother Sonny’s illegitimate son (in King Lear . Edmund, the bastard). Sonny was a hothead; Vincent is a torpedo, a killer without guilt pangs. His speed in violence suggests a kinetic self-realization with a gun. Physically, Garcia is well cast. He has a widow’s peak, and he flashes fire, or his liquid brown eyes twinkle, or he speaks with a sexy undertone. But the illusion never takes hold. Where are the scenes in which Michael would recognize that Vincent has the steel and cunning to hold power? Michael seems to turn his empire over to a loyal bodyguard. The movie appears to be saying that Michael recognizes that in this depraved world Vincent, with his killer instincts, is the man for the job—the man that Michael now thinks he never was. Maybe that’s too self-serving for Coppola to make it more explicit. The Irish actor Donal Donnelly—he was the drunken, stuttering Freddy in The Dead —is perfection as the mealy-mouthed Vatican banker Archbishop Gilday. And as a photojournalist whose casual bedroom date with Vincent puts her in the middle of an attempted hit, the frisky Bridget Fonda has comic electricity popping out all over. As Michael’s financial adviser (a replacement for Duvall), George Hamilton, loitering in the background, looks as if he were born encased in a stretch limo; too bad he has nothing to do. Negative publicity about the movie has centered on Coppola’s daughter Sofia, who plays Michael’s adored daughter, Mary. It’s obvious that this teen-age girl is not a trained actress; she seems uncomfortable at times, and her voice (or a dubber’s voice) lacks expressiveness—which is a serious flaw in her last scene. But she has a lovely and unusual presence; she gives the film a breath of life, and I grew to like her. (What I didn’t like was that Coppola makes you feel protective toward her. And there’s one layer too many when she says “Dad” at the end.) The strongest performance—in terms of sheer animal strength and suggestions of emotional reserves—is given by Talia Shire, whose Connie calls up dark plotting women like Livia in I, Claudius , and Lady Macbeth, and Lucrezia Borgia; she’s tough. It’s Connie who angles Vincent into the family; when she’s fed up listening to him talk about how he wants to kill one of the Corleones’ enemies, she says “Do it,” and her words have the kinetic charge of his actions. Part of Connie’s silent-movie witchiness is in her resemblance to Pacino’s ravaged Michael, and part is in her reflective, knowing half smile. Connie acts like family: when she says, “Come on, Michael,” it’s in a gutsy, impatient voice that only she would dare to use. Visually, Godfather III is disappointingly soft and dark; it’s so toned in to the earlier films that it seems to belong to a brown past. (The processing must be at fault: the film looks as if it were already on TV.) The core colors of the three movies come through in the blood-red silks and velvets, burnished dark wood, and gold details of the opera-house scenes in Sicily, where Anthony makes his debut as the tenor in Cavalleria Rusticana . This Sicilian opera about La Vendetta represents where the saga of the Corleones began, when young Vito’s parents were murdered. And while the music goes on, a series of assassinations is carried out— an echo of the assassinations that ended the first film. The picture might have had some fresh wit if we’d seen that now that the Corleones were in the legitimate business world they had lawyers do their dirty deeds. Instead, it’s the same old bang-bang, and this time there’s no horror in the bloodshed—only grandiosity. (You may not even be quite sure who’s doing what, or why.) When Michael has his big scene on the steps of the opera house, with a prolonged silent scream and then an actual scream, we don’t experience his agony. His later, final moment seems just an addendum, a mistake. There’s no conviction in Michael’s atonement, and none in Vincent’s fire, either. Godfather III looks like a Godfather movie , but it’s not about revenge and it’s not about passion and power and survival. It’s about a battered moviemaker’s king-size depression.

The New Yorker , January 14, 1991

More: Francis Ford Coppola , Movie reviews , Pauline Kael , The Godfather Part III , The New Yorker

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The Godfather Part III Review

27 Mar 1991

160 minutes

Godfather Part III, The

As a nice little film about a bunch of hoods and their involvement in some complicated conspiracy involving the Vatican, The Godfather Part III works just fine, boasting first-rate performances from its two leading men and displaying enough clever directorial touches to suggest that this Francis Ford Coppola chap is a name to look out for. As the slavishly-awaited sequel to two of the finest films of the last 30 years, however, as the third episode in what may well be the Greatest Movie Story Ever Told, The Godfather Part III is, frankly, a dreadful disappointment.

It is, perhaps, unfair that this new production should be so smothered under the reputation of two films made nearly 20 years ago. By so closely adhering to the exact structure of his previous two instalments, however, and through his liberal employment of flashbacks, Coppola himself seems to beg for the comparisons, making it abundantly clear throughout that what is on offer here is no new departure, but simply part three of that old familiar tale of the familia Corleone. And as such, it simply doesn't work, lacking the strength of narrative, the menace, the sheer epic sweep of all that has gone before.

For about the first 30 minutes, however, everything seems to be very much in order. The familiar strains of Nino Rota's theme music never fail to send a shiver, the introduction of Andy Garcia as the suitably hotheaded bastard son of Sonny is a welcome addition to the ranks, while Pacino, all grey and shrunk, immediately conveys a telling portrait of immense power and obscene wealth, made all the more impressive by its confinement within such a wizened old frame.

The first hint that we may be going slightly off the rails comes with the gathering of the clans and the subsequent Die Hard-style interruption from the skies, a badly-handled set piece more reminiscent of Bond than the beautifully understated brutality of the tollbooth.

From here on, the violence becomes increasingly cartoon, notably Garcia riding a horse through the inevitable street festival, while things go from bad to worse as it gradually becomes all too apparent just how far out of her depth Sofia Coppola really is, floundering helplessly in her vain attempts to convince as both the Garcia love interest and daughter of the Don. By the time the much-vaunted operatic climax comes along, it is hardly surprising that proceedings finally slip into near-farce, as the supposed top assassin in all of Sicily takes a good half-hour and a fair portion of Cavalleria Rusticana to line up his sights. Miss Sofia manages to provoke the giggles amidst such supposed tragedy and all that is left is a basic re-run of your actual Don Corelone coil-shuffling routine to round things off.

Fans of the first two instalments are likely to find The Godfather Part III an unworthy heir to the tradition. First-time voters, meanwhile, will surely wonder what on earth all the fuss was all about.

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Al Pacino in close-up in The Godfather Part III

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Francis Ford Coppola’s new cut of Godfather Part III settles the family business for good

A look at what ‘The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone’ salvages

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No filmmaker has made better use of the Director’s Cut format than Francis Ford Coppola . Rather than defang and truncate the first two Godfather films for network television in the 1970s, Coppola restructured them as one chronological saga – running seven hours and featuring loads of new footage – that allowed viewers a more straightforward perspective on the Corleone family tragedy. In 2001, Coppola unveiled Apocalypse Now Redux , a massive, meticulously restored expansion of his Vietnam masterpiece that some critics felt eclipsed the already-worshipped theatrical release. And just last year, the filmmaker returned to the catastrophic failure of The Cotton Club for a reworking that, if nothing else, gave the sluggish gangster flick some much-needed musical oomph.

So when Paramount announced earlier this year that Coppola had reworked 1990’s The Godfather Part III as The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone , there was reason to hope, based on previous successes, that the director had at last solved some of the trilogy capper’s nagging flaws. But what, realistically, could be done to enhance Sofia Coppola’s awkward performance as Michael’s daughter Mary, or fill the void left by Robert Duvall when he turned down Paramount’s paltry offer to reprise his key role as Corleone family consigliere, Tom Hagen? Coppola may be the maestro of the Director’s Cut, but to fully address these shortcomings he’d have to weave some kind of editorial sorcery that does not yet exist.

The Godfather 3 re-edit aka The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone poster

What Coppola accomplishes is less a magic act than an elegant threading of a needle. As he states in his introduction to the inelegantly titled The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone , the final installment was envisioned as an epilogue to the epic narrative of the first two movies. Indeed, that onerous title was the preferred moniker of both Coppola and The Godfather author Mario Puzo, who partnered with the director on the screenplays for all three films. Paramount understandably balked at the notion of treating the first Godfather movie in 16 years as, in Coppola’s words, a “summation” instead of an event, but by releasing it as “ The Godfather Part III ” (on Christmas Day, no less), they were priming audiences and critics for a grand finale the filmmaker had no interest in delivering; ergo, much of the initial criticism of the movie, which was rushed through production to meet that prestigious release date, hammered the film for a slow-to-develop plot that felt like a retread of its immaculate predecessors. The narrative familiarity wasn’t viewed as intentional, but rather as a sign of creative bankruptcy.

Coppola’s revision, which runs a shorter 157 minutes, resets expectations immediately by placing its subtitle not only in quotations, but separate from the classic Godfather marionette logo (a first for the series). The opening images of the flooded Corleone compound in Lake Tahoe have been replaced with a low-angle exterior shot of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, an architectural, midtown antiquity dwarfed by its neighboring skyscrapers – which is jarring given that the original The Godfather Part III kicks off in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral downtown in Little Italy. What’s going on here? Coppola cuts directly to Michael’s meeting with Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly), the overwhelmed, chain-smoking head of the Vatican Bank who desperately sells off the Vatican’s controlling shares in real estate conglomerate Internazionale Immobiliare to the Corleone family. Previously, this scene landed after the Vatican-sponsored ceremony and party feting Michael for his charitable works. By repositioning the Gilday scene, Coppola makes the stakes startlingly clear: Michael is leveraging the Catholic Church’s debt to legitimize the Corleone family business and, not for nothing, become one of the wealthiest men in the world. As the deal is all but consummated, Gilday sheepishly laments, “It seems in today’s world, the power to absolve debt is greater than the power to forgive.” To which Michael retorts, “Never underestimate the power of forgiveness.”

Forgiveness. This is the dramatic business Coppola and Puzo have chosen for Michael in this “coda,” and the film’s busy plotting finally serves a unified theme. Ever since he volunteered to assassinate Sollozzo and McCluskey, Michael has treated life as a chessboard; he sacrificed his own brother to checkmate Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg), and accepted the abhorrence of his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), as collateral damage. According to Peter Biskind’s The Godfather Companion , Coppola referred to the final shot of The Godfather Part II , wherein Michael sits in silence outside the Tahoe compound, as “the Hitler scene”. He’s not only settled all family debts; he’s severed himself from any semblance of a loving family. He is devoid of humanity. Twenty years later, as Michael enters the final act of his life, he desires expiation. For a man who has done so much evil, this seems an impossible ask. But viewers retain vivid memories of the man who once said, “That’s my family, Kay; it’s not me.” He had other plans. Could there possibly be a path to redemption for this self-made monster?

Michael Corleone talks to a cardinal in Godfather 3

From Aeschylus to Shakespeare to Arthur Miller, the answer has always been an emphatic “No.” But like all great tragedians, Coppola coaxes his audience into believing there exists a catharsis that could cleanse Michael of his sins and restore the family he brushed aside. The passage of time does a lot of work in the film, and raises many questions: If the Corleone family is successful enough to buy a controlling share in the real estate company Immobiliare, what were they up to in the 1960s — i.e. the decade that sparked America’s fascination with the mafia (and inspired a bestselling book titled The Godfather )? What kind of heat came down on the organization after the assassination of JFK? Did they really avoid the lucrative drug trade that flourished throughout the Vietnam War and beyond?

The Michael of The Godfather, Coda has compartmentalized his business misdeeds. He’s oddly jocular. The Immobiliare deal is complete, pending the formality of the Pope’s approval. He’s a generation removed from his father’s Little Italy territory — now run by the John Gotti-esque Joey Zasa — and he has a savvy publicist (Don Novello) to handle all thorny press inquiries. He is virtually untouchable.

The business may be settled, but for Michael, a man of ultimate conquest, the personal must be confronted. This pursuit was clouded in the film’s previous incarnations, but, by leading with that Gilday scene (instead of the ceremony at the church, which has been excised entirely), it’s the solitary narrative thrust of The Godfather, Coda . Michael isn’t joking about “the power of forgiveness”. He believes atonement is possible. He believes he can reunite his family. He begrudgingly sanctions Anthony Jr.’s opera career, and entrusts the Corleone Foundation to Mary. Kay wants no part of this, but Michael, in a newfound show of vulnerability, allows her to exit a room on her own rather than shut her out. This constitutes growth on the Don’s behalf. As the action moves to Sicily, Michael pours on the charm. He whisks Kay off on a tour of his family’s home village, and summons the memory of the man she once loved (a man viewers barely glimpsed in the first movie). It almost works. It helps that Michael has hedged his bets. Though he’d be thrilled if Kay remarried him, he’ll settle for her not dreading him anymore. The latter appears to be negotiable.

The Godfather 3: Michael and Kay at the opera

When the Pope’s health goes south, the Immobiliare deal appears to be renegotiable, which places Michael at an unexpected disadvantage as he nears his goal of respectability. Michael expected the “legitimate” business world to be less ruthless than the criminal underworld, but, as he confesses to Connie, “The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.” It’s an inversion of the naiveté evinced by Kay in The Godfather when she asserted senators and presidents don’t have men killed. Michael’s in over his head, and when he sees the sharks circling he has no choice but to hit back in an old school fashion. To do so, he must cede control of the family to his nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), and hope for the best. But even if he succeeds, he now knows “legitimacy” is an illusion.

Those hoping for The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone to be a revelation on the level of Apocalypse Now Redux , or a springboard to a fourth chapter in the saga , will be disappointed. There are no surprises beyond the first 20 minutes of this version, save for the denouement, which denies Michael the release of death he received at the end of the previous cuts. His punishment is a long life (“cent’anni”), the very thing he stole from his enemies and, via one unforgivable act, his brother. Sofia Coppola’s infamous performance is what it is; she does the best with what she’s given, which isn’t very much. And that’s the unfixable element of this film. The pieces are there. Coppola and Puzo plotted it out sensibly. But Mary, whose death is meant to break our heart, never registers as more than a frightened child. In a way, this makes sense: she’s been lied to her entire life, and is romantically fixated on her cousin. This is grist for a psychological drama, and there are moments when The Godfather, Coda takes on the intimate grandeur of Luchino Visconti’s Sicilian family drama, The Leopard .

But this is Michael’s story. Mary is what happens when a father projects a false sense of principle. She is sheltered and, as an adult, helpless – incapable of navigating a world that is cruel beyond conception. In this sense, Coppola has mended the movie. The coda is a perfect summation of his twin masterpieces. It is an American tale. And it is finished.

The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone premieres in limited theaters on Dec. 4; the re-cut arrives to Blu-ray and digital rental services on Dec. 8.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, to coda or not to coda: on the new version of the godfather part iii.

I consider “ The Godfather, Part III ” the ultimate “what if?” of motion pictures. It's clearly not at the same level as its predecessors, but it could have been a masterpiece if not for a few surmountable glitches. What if a more experienced actress was cast in the pivotal role of Michael Corleone’s daughter? What if Robert Duvall had agreed to reprise his role as Tom Hagen (my favorite character in the series)? What if Francis Ford Coppola had been given more time to develop the project? This third entry of the series still feels like unfinished business after all these years, and Coppola seems to agree. His new edition comes with the title he wanted to give the film all along: “ The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone .”

The third movie in the "Godfather" saga deals with Michael’s last shot to take his family away from the world of crime. But fate and circumstance pull him back in, as he ends up paying the steepest of prices in what director Coppola once described as “the nightmare of nightmares.”

The first thing to say about “Coda” is that represents the exact opposite approach to Coppola’s own “ Apocalypse Now /Redux ” re-release from years past. Instead of aiming to bolster and enrich his film with previously deleted scenes, Coppola simply repositions some of them and takes out several lines from what is the most dialogue-laden, least contemplative entry in his trilogy. As a result, he hurries the pace and gets to the point quicker, a strategy that works well with the Immobiliare Corporation takeover (the MacGuffin and least interesting part of this feature). But Coppola inexplicably eliminates some memorable moments and lines as well (“Name the person and I will name my price,” or “You were so loved Don Tomassino, why was I so feared?”).

The original cut of “The Godfather, Part III” was designed with a similar structure to those of its predecessors. The film opened with a party where the Don in turn would listen to his guests’ requests, and it ended with the murders of several of his enemies. Still, both editions of the third "Godfather" movie have a different feel than Part One and Part Two. The third film is more of a Shakespearean tragedy in which the subtle character reactions of the first two films are a distant memory (just compare Don Corleone’s response upon learning about Sonny’s death to Michael’s when he goes through the same ordeal, or even to that of the woman in Sicily crying hysterically over the murder of Don Tomassino). The plot in the third film is also advanced more by way of dialogue than by the action itself, with a now very talkative Michael Corleone.

Moreover, there is a crucial difference between the third "Godfather" film and its two predecessors. While the main theme for the first two movies was the deep bond between siblings and the occasional deep hate that could arise from them, in this third feature it's the even deeper love between a parent and a child that fuels the story, forcing Michael to finally try what he always promised: to leave a world he swore never to join but where he always seemed more than a bit comfortable. Maybe Coppola changed the focus with this third film because by then Michael had lost most of those close to him, but it seems to me that Coppola simply tried to make a different movie based on his own life experiences at that point in time.

The film's weaknesses are the same in both editions. There's still a lack of believability in how Michael’s son goes from novice singer to leading an international opera ensemble in no more than a couple of months, and there's still a problem with Mary, as played by Coppola’s daughter Sofia. It's a part in which any actress, no matter how experienced, would have had her work cut out for her. Sofia had to make a convincing case that Vincent ( Andy Garcia ) would leave Bridget Fonda in the rearview mirror and risk everything for her. In a nutshell, the audience absolutely had to fall in love with with Mary.

And yet, maybe it was her father’s obvious love for Sofia that allowed him to create such an affecting result, especially with the film’s conclusion. The best sign of how well the third film works is that despite all of its flaws, the love that Coppola bestows on his own daughter through his alter ego (Michael) is palpable throughout. This is as heartfelt work as any the director has ever done, one that could only have be made by someone who has loved and lost deeply.

Coppola’s new edition is a less meandering film, but it still doesn’t always makes sense. In one minute Michael is laying on his hospital bed, but in the next we see him arriving in Sicily. It's only our familiarity with the movie that saves us from getting completely lost. What’s odd about this new version is that Coppola doesn’t even take the opportunity to fix some things that were wrong with his original cut. That includes some truly awkward love scenes and a couple of serious continuity problems, like the moment early on when Michael offers Kay a piece of cake minutes before such is actually cut, or the sequence halfway through when his son Anthony is shown carrying the drawing he gave his father as a child, only for Coppola to share the moment when Michael actually hands it to him a good while later. The only real addition to this new edition comes during the stabbing of Don Lucchesi: a previously unseen blood geyser, in what was already the movie’s most absurd scene, especially when considering that his murderer had plenty of more believable weapons at his disposal than a standard pair of glasses.

“The Godfather Part III” has always suffered from the comparisons to its predecessors, two of the finest motion pictures ever made, but it fares rather well on its own. It was an inspiring idea for Coppola to include a scene where Michael seizes the opportunity to confess the sins that the audience had been carrying along with him for 16 years; it's a truly cathartic moment for everyone, one of the most emotional in the whole series. It was also inspired to design Michael’s death scene so similarly to his own father’s, a simple and peaceful way for both men to die after leading such tumultuous lives. But it makes no sense whatsoever that Coppola chose to take out Michael’s passing in a new edition titled “The Death of Michael Corleone.”

While “The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone” does have a quicker pace than the original edition, its biggest flaw is Coppola’s inexplicable decision to butcher his film’s wonderful, poignant final sequence. It's perhaps the best moment from the original release, one that perfectly captured Michael's tragedy through the images of the women he loved and lost; here it is supplanted with text that conveys a point we had already grasped two hours before. Overall this new edition is mostly a non-event. For anyone who has never seen the third "Godfather" movie, the original version is the way to go.

Gerardo Valero

Gerardo Valero is lives in Mexico City with his wife Monica. Since 2011 he's been writing a daily blog about film clichés and flubs (in Spanish) on Mexico's Cine-Premiere Magazine . His contributions to "Ebert's Little Movie Glossary" were included in the last twelve editions of "Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook."

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Screen Rant

Why the godfather 3 is so badly regarded.

The Godfather Part III is the final instalment in Francis Ford Coppola's trilogy, but here's why the threequel was badly received upon release.

Why was The Godfather Part III so badly received upon release? There are few filmmakers with a run of masterpieces quite like Francis Ford Coppola during the 1970s, which includes the first two Godfather movies, The Conversation , and Apocalypse Now . The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are considered among the greatest movies of all time, and tell a sprawling story about a mafia family and chart Michael Corleone's rise from being reluctant to join the family business to becoming a cold-blooded leader. But The Godfather 3 isn't so well-regarded.

Coppola was initially reluctant to return for The Godfather Part II , and after it was finished felt that Michael's story was complete. Paramount still pursued the third movie in the 1980s, which at one point Sylvester Stallone was linked to star in and direct, with John Travolta and Eddie Murphy possibly co-starring. That version didn't happen, and Francis Ford Coppola eventually returned for The Godfather Part III , in part as a way to pay off the huge debts he had acquired from the box-office failure of the 1982 musical One From The Heart .

Related: Marlon Brando's Planned Cameo In Godfather 2 (& Why He Rejected It)

Coppola's way into The Godfather Part III wasn't to view it as a sequel but as an epilogue to Michael's story and a chronicle of how the sins of his past would finally come to collect. Given that the movie arrived 16 years later and followed on from two classics, expectations were high. Unfortunately, critics and audiences were mostly mixed on The Godfather 3 , and while the performances of Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Andy Garcia received strong reviews, many considered it a disappointing mess.

Godfather 3 Had A Stuffed Plot And Wasted Its Cast

While easily the weakest chapter in the ranking of Godfather movies , The Godfather 3 is by no means a terrible movie, but it does have notable faults. The main storyline involving shenanigans at the Vatican feels somewhat convoluted and uninvolving, several scenes feel like they genuinely don't belong (especially the helicopter assault sequence), and where the previous movies featured performers like Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Robert Duvall, it feels like the bulk of The Godfather Part III is left to Pacino.

It's also hard to talk about the reception to The Godfather Part III without noting the backlash to Sofia Coppola's performance as Mary, Michael's daughter. Many articles accused the director of nepotism during the movie's release, though Sofia Coppola was a last-minute replacement for Winona Ryder, who dropped out just before filming. The bulk of the criticism focuses on The Godfather 3 's Sofia Coppola casting and performance , which is admittedly quite stilted at times. All those factors added up to the movie's regrettable reception as a lackluster ending to the saga.

Did The Godfather 3 Recut Fix Its Problems?

The overall critical reception of The Godfather Part III has improved little in the 30 years since its release, but on its own terms, it's a worthy epilogue to the series that just fares badly compared to the first two. In 2020, Coppola released a new edit, dubbed Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone , which reordered scenes, tightened the runtime (despite its unwieldy title), and restored his original intentions with the movie. The recut has received mostly good reviews.

Related: Why The Godfather Is Better Than Part II

All of the changes Coppola made in The Godfather 3 's Coda cut seem to have been for the better, such as trimming the run time to improve the film's pacing, reducing the amount of time Sofia Coppola's character Mary spends onscreen, and making key alterations to the film's opening and closing scenes. But while The Godfather Coda 's pacing is better and it has less fluff, it still carries many of the same flaws, not least of which are the absence of Robert Duvall and Sofia Coppola's insufficient acting chops. All in all, The Godfather Part III will never truly hold up to the originals, whatever form it takes in the editing suite.

More: Why Frank Sinatra Hated The Godfather

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Worth a watch … Diane Keaton and Al Pacino in The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone review – Coppola edits the past

The director tweaks the little-loved final part of his Godfather trilogy as Michael tries to break into legitimate business

J ust when you thought you were out … he pulls you back in. Francis Ford Coppola has presided over different editorial remixes of Apocalypse Now , and now he’s done the same with his little-loved The Godfather Part III from 1990: with new edits and a new title. He and co-writer Mario Puzo have removed the “threequel” stigma by renaming it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, but, at 158 minutes (compared with the 175 and 202 minutes of the other two films), it’s hardly short enough to be a coda and doesn’t function structurally as such. Rightly or wrongly, it is exactly what the original title declared it to be: part three, the third act in the life of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who in his 60s tries to go into respectable business by bailing out the Vatican’s financially embarrassed bank. He thereby becomes a businessman of enormous power, somewhere between Faustus and Mephistopheles, yet also a vulnerable target for shadowy conspirators.

There are a number of little changes to the original, the most important being at the very end, which might baffle those wondering about that new title. This change could imply that his real death was the emotional or spiritual death that happened on the steps of the opera house in Palermo, or even much earlier than that.

Michael is drawn back into mob violence ostensibly because he gets involved in a quarrel between Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), the boorish boss of the casino he sold off, and his nephew Vincent Corleone (Andy Garcia), son of the late Sonny, played in G1 by James Caan. Naturally, Michael sides with Vincent, with awful results. But it isn’t just this. Michael realises that the supposedly legitimate world of business and politics he has been yearning for all his life is just as brutal as the mob, and Michael comes to play a key role in cheekily fictionalised versions of two real events: the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I and the 1982 murder of the Vatican-connected banker Roberto Calvi .

This film was derided at the time as a shark-jumping mess: choppy, convoluted, anti-climactic and with an underwhelming performance from the director’s daughter, Sofia Coppola , as Michael’s daughter Mary. It undoubtedly feels stuffy compared with Scorsese’s GoodFellas , which came out the same year and was much more vibrant than Coppola’s rather stately and self-consciously Shakespearian tale. (Amusingly, Scorsese’s mother Catherine had a cameo in both films.)

Well, some critical revisionism is in order. Admittedly many scenes in this film are obvious retreads of key scenes from part one: the initial party set piece in which Michael receives visitors in his sanctum, and the final sequence, in which cold-blooded hits are intercut with a public event. But they are intended as “mirroring” events, full of dramatic irony and ill omen. This film has ambition and reach: maybe the conspiracy-theory stuff from the real world feels forced, but it gives a kind of surreal vividness to Michael’s endgame. His audacious “confession” scene with the cardinal who will become Pope John Paul I is outrageous in a way, but also melodramatically inspired.

And Sofia Coppola isn’t as bad as all that. She brings a mopey callow yearning, as well as unresolved sexual tension to her forbidden love affair with her cousin Vincent. (And of course has proved herself as a director many times over since then.) I’m not sure how much, if anything, Coppola’s re-edit does for the film, but it’s worth a watch.

Francis Ford Coppola
Sofia Coppola
Crime films
Drama films

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Movie Review: The Godfather Part III (1990)
Revisiting Godfather III an In-Depth Video Review
'The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone' Movie Review -- It
دانلود فیلم پدر خوانده 3 1990 The Godfather: Part III با دوبله فارسی یا
'The Godfather 3' gets recut: See the trailer for the "new" film
The 20 Best Scenes in The Godfather Trilogy

VIDEO

THE GODFATHER PART III (1990)
Прохождение The Godfather#3
The Godfather 3
The Godfather 3
The Godfather Part III (1990)
The Godfather 3

COMMENTS

The Godfather, Part III movie review (1990)
"The Godfather, Part III" continues the Corleone family history in 1979, as the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. Despite every attempt to go legit, to become respectable, the past cannot be silenced. The family has amassed unimaginable wealth, and as the film opens Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is being invested with a great honor by the church. Later that day, at a reception ...
The Godfather, Part III
CLIP 2:12. The Godfather: Part III: Official Clip - Mary is Hit. CLIP 1:43. The Godfather: Part III: Official Clip - I Want You to Forgive Me. CLIP 1:21. The Godfather: Part III: Official Clip - I ...
The Godfather Part III (1990)
The Godfather: Part III is a good movie with a reasonably well developed plot and a terrific cast. It certainly stands out on its own, Al Pacino shines as Michael Corleone here, being his first time playing the character in 16 years, it is as if he never left the role. ... Review of "Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael ...
The Godfather Part III (1990)
The Godfather Part III: Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. With Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia. Follows Michael Corleone, now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire.
The Godfather, Part III
The Godfather, Part III Reviews. Starts off strong, becomes bogged down in expository dialogue, and finishes with an anti-climactic climax. Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 9, 2023. It's ...
Newly Re-Edited, "The Godfather: Part III" Is the Masterpiece It
Richard Brody reviews Francis Ford Coppola's newly re-edited "The Godfather: Part III," from 1990, now under the title "Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone."
'Godfather 3' Coda Review: It Was Always Worthy
Nevertheless, the cumbersome title of "The Godfather, Coda" does provoke one's curiosity. It makes the movie sound like a different animal from what it was before. (It opens in a handful of ...
The Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American crime film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from the screenplay co-written with Mario Puzo.The film stars Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy García, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, Bridget Fonda, George Hamilton, and Sofia Coppola.It is the third and final installment in The Godfather trilogy.A sequel to The Godfather (1972) and The ...
'The Godfather: Part III' Review: Movie (1990)
On Dec. 20, 1990, Francis Ford Coppola unveiled The Godfather: Part III at its premiere at the Academy Theater in Beverly Hills. The film went on to gross $136 million globally and nab seven Oscar ...
The Godfather: Part III
Overall, as a standalone movie, it is definitely very flawed, but it has its moments. As a Godfather film, it is somewhat of a clunker. I didn't hate the movie, but with unconvincing and very less powerful performances, a somewhat cliche plot at some points, and overall a slow pacing, The Godfather Part III is definitely a step bellow its predecessors.
Review/Film; The Corleones Try to Go Straight In 'The Godfather Part III'
It has allowed the "Godfather" films, including this one, to be grandly, improbably majestic yet also mercifully free of self-importance. They remain Mr. Coppola's best work. "The Godfather Part ...
The Godfather: Part III
The Godfather: Part III. By Peter Travers. December 25, 1990. Few sequels can match the charge of anticipation you feel before watching the third part of Francis Ford Coppola 's Godfather series ...
The Godfather
Movie Info. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, this mob drama, based on Mario Puzo's novel of the same name, focuses on the powerful Italian-American crime family of Don ...
The Godfather review
There is a toxic chill to the film's opening speech, from a local undertaker piteously demanding the Don take revenge on his behalf against two over-privileged white boys who have raped and ...
Godfather Part III, The
A movie review by James Berardinelli. Eighteen years after the first screenings of The Godfather, the long-awaited third and final chapter reached theaters. That it proved unable to fulfill expectations was a predictable - if somewhat disheartening - result, given the sixteen year buildupThe Godfather Part III is a good movie, ...
THE GODFATHER PART III (1990)
by Pauline Kael. At the end of The Godfather Part II (1974), the story was complete—beautifully complete. Francis Ford Coppola knew it, and for over a decade he resisted Paramount's pleas for another sequel. But the studio's blandishments became more honeyed, his piggy bank was smashed, and late in 1988 he had an illumination: he discovered how the story should be continued.
The Godfather Part III Review
26 Mar 1991. Running Time: 160 minutes. Certificate: 15. Original Title: Godfather Part III, The. As a nice little film about a bunch of hoods and their involvement in some complicated conspiracy ...
Francis Ford Coppola's new cut of Godfather Part III ...
And it is finished. The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone premieres in limited theaters on Dec. 4; the re-cut arrives to Blu-ray and digital rental services on Dec. 8. The Godfather ...
To Coda or Not to Coda: On the New Version of The Godfather Part III
Advertisement. The third movie in the "Godfather" saga deals with Michael's last shot to take his family away from the world of crime. But fate and circumstance pull him back in, as he ends up paying the steepest of prices in what director Coppola once described as "the nightmare of nightmares.". The first thing to say about "Coda" is ...
Why The Godfather 3 Is So Badly Regarded
Given that the movie arrived 16 years later and followed on from two classics, expectations were high. Unfortunately, critics and audiences were mostly mixed on The Godfather 3, and while the performances of Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and Andy Garcia received strong reviews, many considered it a disappointing mess.
The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone review
The director tweaks the little-loved final part of his Godfather trilogy as Michael tries to break into legitimate business Peter Bradshaw Tue 1 Dec 2020 09.00 EST Last modified on Fri 8 Jul 2022 ...
The Godfather Part III (1990) Movie Review
Rockin' Robbie Billups and The Excitable PCP Crew watch and review THE GODFATHER PART III, starring Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, Diane Keaton, Sofia Coppola and d...

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The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone review – Coppola edits the past

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