Review of The Godfather Part III (1990) by Axelkoch — 15 Dec 2013

The last instalment in the Godfather trilogy, The Godfather Part III, has some obvious flaws. Including real life events out of the time of the Vatican’s crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s, for one, let the whole plot seem a bit weird and didn’t work all the time. Even more crucial, the casting of Sofia Coppola as Michael’s grown-up daughter Mary. Although we’ve come to experience her directing qualities a decade later, she just didn’t succeed in her role and was utterly unconvincing throughout the film. And, as in the two first films, it’s also more than a tad too long, which makes for some rather dreary moments.

Nevertheless, The Godfather Part III is a very good film and can very well compete with the rest of the series, despite being yet another step back from The Godfather’s initial quality. Not only can the audience still enjoy fabulous cinematography, set design, and score work (all of these securing the film’s respectable amount of Oscar nominations), but also some final 20 minutes that will keep The Godfather Part III in your memory. As we can relish in the insanely well-made shots of all the people that have just died under most unnatural circumstances, the crew concocts what are, in my opinion, the three best shots of all three films: Frederick Keinszig, hanging dead from a bridge, Calò stabbing Don Lucchesi with his own glasses, and Archbishop Gilday falling to his dead.

It may be just a bit too little of everything to establish Part III’s place on the same shelf as the first two films in the series, but it’s still the great Francis Ford Coppola that directed it and made the most out of a story significantly less interesting than I had expected.