Review of The Godfather Part II (1974) by Bheema D — 19 Jul 2014

How do you improve on something that in most regards is considered perfect? You add Robert De Niro, of course! By giving him the original role he auditioned for but set many years in the past, it's great how everything works out like that. It's great that he wasn't put into any supporting roles in the first film because the fantastic acting by him is some of the best. It really shows that he loved the role, as soon as he is introduced he looks very much like a young Vito should, the make up department does it again.

The Godfather part II is a worthy continuation of the story in the first part, it showcases the rise of Vito Corleone and the decline of Michael's morality and it all weaves together perfectly, both stories are shown at the same time via time skips. At the start the time frame of each story felt evenly dispensed but as the film progressed they began to be individual lengths, sometimes only cutting to Michael's story for a few minutes before going back to Vito's story.

I think it's amazing how well both films are made, considering that this used very little from the book and the first was adapted from the book but left young Vito out of the first film, it's all paced very well and the hefty run time of 3 hours and 20 minutes really does speed by very fast. The story is of course brilliant and has a few twists and turns and it is all very interesting.

Besides that though, the real masterclass here is the acting, this film boasts a huge and distinguished cast of acting legends, everybody here really does do an amazing job, they're all Oscar worthy performances but Robert De Niro was the only acting winner here, it's amazing, he was still relatively unknown at the time and arguably gave one of the best performances in one of the most successful series of all time and all accomplished by speaking about only two lines of English, his career went booming after this and deservedly so. Al Pacino was intense, the decline of his character's morality feels real but he still manages to be a well rounded character, the scenes with his children show that he does genuinely have a care for them. You can tell when he's about to blow, though, it's all in the eyes and it's excellent. Besides the main two, I'm not gonna list everyone because they're all excellent, even when some characters are brought back for a final flashback scene, it's just some of the best acting in history. The music is of course iconic and very memorable and something else that caught my attention was the beautiful cinematography of it all, it was all very clear and very nice to look at.

Overall, it is an excellently made film that raised the bar for all sequels and everything was done amazingly. Perfect acting, amazing story telling and great dialogue, 3 hours and 20 minutes have never been so engaging. I wanted more and I wanted to see it again straight after.