Note: There are countless spoilers for each of the films in the Godfather trilogy in this post
Last night, I re-watched The Godfather Part III for the first time in several years, having re-watched the saga's first two installments the week before. History has not been kind to Part III, mostly because it is inevitably compared to the first two parts, but on the whole, I think it's a pretty great movie. No, it doesn't have the classic scenes or lines of The Godfather, nor the ambition or powerhouse performances of The Godfather Part II, but despite Sofia Coppola's acting being as poor as advertised, it's a movie worth watching. Assuming you've watched the first two, that is; unlike Part II, which I think could be enjoyed (and understood) without watching the original, Part III requires familiarity with its predecessors.
As time goes by, my opinion of Part III continues to increase while my opinion of the original decreases (to be clear, the original is a cinematic masterpiece and is still, objectively, superior to Part III). To some degree, this should be expected--the original is universally heralded as one of the greatest films of all-time (it is very rare that a film released after it ranks higher on all-time lists), and entering with too high of expectations is understandable. Meanwhile, Part III is regarded almost as a joke, when contemporary reviews were generally positive (if not as positive as the first two films) and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (which should have gone to a superior mafia movie, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas).
Regardless of what you think of the quality of the film, Part III is a much different type of film than the first two, particularly the original. And while, by most standards, it lags behind the others, from a standpoint of morality and of making a statement about its universe, Part III rises to levels that the original film and sequel do not even attempt to achieve.
The Godfather treats Vito Corleone as a hero, and that he can pass as one despite heading a criminal organization speaks to the effectiveness of the film. But perhaps this is also an indictment of the film's moral compass. While the first scene in the film seemingly shows Vito as a reasonable man who avoids violence when possible--rejecting the request of Amerigo Bonasera to murder two men who had beaten his daughter and instead vowing (presumably) that they be beaten instead of killed--the first extended conversation between Michael Corleone and his girlfriend Kay Adams reveals a horrific man, one who threatened to murder a bandleader for profit.
Vito Corleone, the histrionics of Marlon Brando notwithstanding, is far from a saint. He is, at best, a lesser of two evils (as revealed in Part II, he was more warm-hearted than Don Fanucci, who preceeded Vito as the primary organized crime force in Little Italy). But he does use violence and intimidation to achieve his goals. When he rejects Virgil Sollozzo's proposal to enter the world of drug trafficking, it is not because Vito believes that there is anything wrong with heroin, but because the police he bribed won't like it. It is, to borrow from Godfather universe parlance, strictly business.
The Godfather is full of iconic scenes and characters and performances, but it also glamorizes organized crime. And that is because, at its heart, The Godfather trilogy is not a mafia movie. It's a movie about royalty.
Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola may have crafted the defining mafia story, but anybody with even a passing familiarity with the actual Italian underworld can sniff out how little they actually knew about it. Mafiosi, for instance, do not wear suits as their standard uniform--businessmen do. While organizations are known as "families", this is far less literal than as evoked in the world of The Godfather--Sonny Corleone was essentially a prince, groomed from a young age to inherit the crown of Don, but in real life, while some sons follow their fathers into the underworld, the Corleone family probably would've gone to Peter Clemenza upon Vito's death (it certainly wouldn't have gone to Michael, whose rap sheet included two murders within a few seconds of each other and no crimes prior to that). The Part II murder of Fredo Corleone is an analogue to the closest thing to American royalty's own abhorrent incident of pushing an inconvenient relative aside--the lobotomization of Rosemary Kennedy (not even a minute earlier in film time, Hyman Roth was murdered in an obvious homage to the death of Lee Harvey Oswald). In Part III, when first-cousins Vincent Mancini and Mary Corleone strike up a romance, Michael only objects on the grounds that it is dangerous for Mary. The films are so singularly focused on the power structure of the mafia that a character like Joey Zasa, largely analogous to one of the most famous high-ranking mafia members ever (John Gotti), is regarded as essentially irrelevant by Michael.
Goodfellas is a mafia movie. You never see the don. The highest-ranking member you do see, Paul Cicero, holds the same rank as Peter Clemenza and Sal Tessio, who are primarily subservient in their scenes in the first film. None of the three primary characters are even in the mafia--they merely represent the kinds of low-level hoods who make the bosses rich. But make no mistake--Vito Corleone had plenty of Henry Hills and Jimmy Conways hijacking freight for him.
The Godfather Part II does more moral reckoning than its precedessor, but the message is mixed. In the original film, Michael Corleone is rewarded for his evil--the murders of Sollozzo and Captain Mark McCluskey could be justified as protecting his father, but the murders of four mafia dons and Moe Greene were strict money grabs. In the sequel, Michael grows more ruthless and begins to lose what he has--his relationship with his trusted, even-tempered brother Tom Hagen is strained, his wife and children leave him, and after he orders the murder of his brother Fredo, he is a man clearly defeated. You don't necessarily feel "empathy" for him, per se, but you are reminded of the innocent Dartmouth grad just hoping to attend the wedding of his sister with his WASP girlfriend in the opening scene of The Godfather. Michael will likely never be arrested, given his ability to avoid prosecution under Congressional investigation, but his conscience, long ignored but ultimately still existent, can punish him.
In Part III, however, Michael really reckons with his past. This older version of Michael is haunted by his past and abhors the violence which caused his soul to be doomed and his family to stray from him. In his first altercation with his ex-wife Kay, what Michael became is evoked clearly. Kay looks older; Michael looks ancient. In the previous films, Michael felt taller (actors Al Pacino and Diane Keaton are both 5'7"). In this one, Michael appears cowardly and defeated while holding a tray of snacks. Michael held the power throughout most of the first two films, and even when Kay threatens to divorce Michael, his apathy doesn't allow her to gain an emotional edge. By the third film, Michael no longer has his undeserved sense of confidence.
The most memorable line in Part III comes from a quiet scene in which Michael bemoans, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." There is nothing cool about this line, in the way that "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" or "Leave the gun, take the cannoli" is. Michael spends this scene, and really the entire movie, reflecting on the world in which he has surrounded himself. Michael is clearly a better person in Part III than he was in the first two films, but he spends the entire film being defeated. Even when good things happen--when the Vatican presents him a prestigious award, or when he purchases the Internazionale Immobiliare bank--he is so ravaged with guilt that he can't enjoy it. And he deserves it.
Mary Corleone doesn't deserve her fate--she was a good, if naive, person. But Michael Corleone deserves her fate. He deserves to suffer. He deserves what ultimately happens to him--a lonely, unceremonious death. By the end of Part III, you understand this. But when Vito Corleone dies, happily and with his grandson in the garden at his mansion furnished by the blood of countless innocents, one doesn't generally think about how much worse he deserves.
Those who haven't seen the films tend to lump Goodfellas in with The Godfather trilogy, but they are stylistically very different. The Godfather films are deeply artistic, methodical stories of a family (a violent family, but a family), while Goodfellas is the cinematic equivalent of cocaine. You might be entertained by Tommy Devito asking Henry Hill how he's funny, but you immediately recognize him as a scumbag when he murders men for teasing him. Goodfellas is fun to watch, but it doesn't make the actual experience of being a career criminal look fun. The Godfather films do, because they show those who aren't all that involved in the darker elements of that world.
The single best scene in the Godfather trilogy, for my money, is the one in which Michael kills Sollozzo. The civilian Michael hears a passing train with increasing clarity, as it sounds to the audience as though his world is crashing into him. Michael knows that he is a few seconds away from a point of no return, and when he makes the final decision that he is indeed going to murder a drug kingpin and police captain and promptly flee the country, the noise of the train stops. In that moment, Michael is devoid of emotion. He blocks out the rational part of his brain and acts. But until Part III, Michael never truly faces comeuppance for his tendency to remove himself from the humanity of his actions. So while the film may not be the thrilling shoot-em-up that audiences expected from the series, it is a necessary epilogue. Because for a life of crime, Michael deserved worse than a few seconds of staring off into space.
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