The Godfather Part III Review

The Godfather Part III is a genuinely moving idea executed unevenly. Francis Ford Coppola gives Michael Corleone the last act the saga demanded, an aging killer buying respectability and discovering that just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in, and Al Pacino plays the guilt with a diabetic frailty that honors the character's arc.

The film's climax at the Palermo opera house, assassinations crosscut with Cavalleria Rusticana while Michael's sins converge on the one innocent left, is worthy of the first two films, and the silent scream on the steps is among Pacino's greatest moments. The problems are structural and human. Sofia Coppola, a last-minute replacement as Mary, cannot carry the emotional weight the plot loads onto her romance with Andy Garcia's Vincent, and the film visibly bends around the gap.

The Vatican-finance conspiracy is labyrinthine without being gripping, a plot you follow by trusting rather than understanding, and the dialogue states themes the earlier films embodied. Gordon Willis still paints in candlelight and ochre, and Garcia supplies real menace. A B-grade film that ends like an S, which is its own kind of heartbreak.