2 out of 5

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

In GF I and II, I watched Michael Corleone’s transition into the family business and ‘rise’ to fully embrace the responsibilities of his role.  In GF III, I’m watching Al Pacino.  While it’s true enough to say that the Corleone character might’ve been responsible for shaping Pacino’s acting style in the years to come, the first movie demanded and an amazing amount of nuance which the then-fledgling actor provided and his bursts of anger in Part II were well juxtaposed by Coppola against his father’s history as well as the general quiet of Part I.  But Part III was – as admitted by the director – not initially intended, with Michael’s tale essentially already complete, and thus it does play out as an afterthought for almost all involved.  It’s heavy-handed and slides too easily into cliches that worked more organically in the previous films.  The series’ established style of casting shadows over large portions of the screen doesn’t bear the same sense of thematic layering and the dialogue is peppered with nigh-eye-rolling ‘poignant’ lines that should make us reflect on the nature of this family, and of Michael, and of power vacuums, and etcetera.  Other reviews have suggested that it can be helpful to separate this from GF and just view it as its own film.  Which is true.  There are still moments of value here.  The violence is large scale and jarring, and the ‘bad’ guys are just dripping with slime.  Though Garcia comes close to caricature, his brashness is fun to watch, bristling against the elder Michael (with cool spiked hair…), and Talia Shire transitions well to the evil sister.  It is interesting to trace their character arcs (from Sonny to his son, from Talia as spoiled ‘rebel’ to plotting second-in-command), and from afar, the overall tragedy of Michael’s rise and inability to fall is fascinating, but whereas the lack of structure made the first film unique and the political clutter of film 2 helped to illustrate Mike’s intelligent machinations, here it all comes as distraction; what could’ve been an affecting character piece turns into a confused mafia tale with some backstory-heavy characters piled atop.