The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration ĭon’t miss a single recommendation. The Godfather Collection: The Coppola Restoration The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (1990/2020, R)Īlso on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video ( The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Godfather Part III ), iTunes, GooglePlay and/or other services. The film was a disappointment but Coppola reworked it thirty years later as The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (1990/2020, R), which somewhat refocuses the film. Andy Garcia, Bridget Fonda, Sofia Coppola, and Joe Mantegna co-star in this final chapter, with George Hamilton taking the Duvall role. Together, they are a landmark work of American cinema.įifteen years later, Coppola returned to the Corleone clan with The Godfather: Part III (1990, R), a somber look at Michael’s efforts to find redemption and pass the torch to the next generation. Cazale is heartbreaking as the hapless Fredo.īoth films won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, and Coppola picked up a Best Director award for Part II. It’s the role that made Pacino’s career and he shows us every step of Michael’s descent from idealism and loyalty into tyranny and bitterness: the price for his power.
Modern mobster Michael has forgotten the old world codes of loyalty and respect and family that guided his father to embrace the calculating ruthlessness of a corporate shark and the flashback structure contrasts Michael’s increasingly ruthless rise with the life of young Vito Corleone (played by Robert De Niro, who won his first Oscar for the role). The Godfather: Part II (1974, R), which contrasts Michael’s increasingly ruthless rise with the life of young Vito Corleone (played by Robert De Niro), it’s less a sequel than a further exploration of the family business that reaches back from and looks beyond the story of the first film. James Caan and John Cazale costar as Michael’s older brothers Sonny and Fredo, Talia Shire his sister, Diane Keaton his fiancée Kay, and Robert Duvall the family consigliere and adopted brother Tom Hagen. It’s hard to believe Paramount just wanted a quick exploitation knock-off, at least until Puzo’s novel became a national best-seller. The Godfather (1972, R) has become the great evocation of the dark side of the American Dream (“I believe in America,” it begins), a (justly) revered cinematic masterpiece and a part of American culture.
This criminal enterprise is just another side of big business and Michael sets himself to pull his family’s tentacles from the criminal world and into legitimacy. Al Pacino stars as Michael Corleone, the clean-cut white sheep and patriotic soldier boy son of New York Godfather Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in an Oscar–winning performance), and this dark side of the American dream story chronicles his rise to ruthless mob leader as modern American businessman. It’s strictly business.”įrancis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestseller remains the great American epic of the immigrant dream turned family business.