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Made a couple of decades after the ground-breaking first two movies for financial rather than strictly artistic reasons, The Godfather Part Three (1990) was greeted appropriately: everyone acknowledged that it simply wasn’t as good as the first two (it’s not); that Coppola’s daughter Sofia, playing Michael Corleone’s daughter Mary, gave a bad performance (she did); and that the story was both over-complicated and rather unengaging (it was). Some critics went further and accused Coppola, and the film, of tarnishing The Godfather legacy.
A tinkerer – he’s put out multiple ‘director’s cuts’ of Apocalypse Now and recently a re-edited version of The Cotton Club – Coppola has sought to address some of these universally acknowledged issues with his re-cut, restored and re-named The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. He can’t take what’s there and make a silk purse, and the new version remains a pale companion to the glory of the first two masterpieces. But he does restore his daughter’s reputation somewhat, by cutting out a lot of her worst moments, and he definitely streamlines and clarifies the story, mainly by strengthening the structure around Vincent Corleone (Andy Garcia). In this version, Vincent’s introduced earlier, and comes this close to being the protagonist, almost putting Michael in the supporting seat.
Of course, no-one puts Al Pacino, in his greatest role (across the three films), in a corner, and he is superb as the ageing mobster who wants to go straight and find redemption in the eyes of God and his children. But the strengthened focus on Garcia works, driving the narrative more cleanly, and, frankly, Sofia doesn’t come off too badly (though there are still some cringe-worthy line readings). It’s a leaner, cleaner, more comprehensible and watchable version of itself – shorter by thirteen minutes – and worth your time for a re-visit. It looks and feels like The Godfather, and has some sublime moments and a couple of great set-pieces. Like Michael, it seeks redemption. Unlike Michael, it gets some.
I love Godfather 3 .Can’t wait to see this. Andrew Sarris called it the worthy conclusion to the greatest American film epic of the last twenty years and an underrated masterpiece in its own right. I thought it was the most heartbreaking tragic courageous and moral film to come out of Hollywood in years .It was everything that that abomination The Irishman tried to be but wasn’t..By the way not everyone loves Godfather 2 , Vincent Canby in the New York Times called it a Frankenstein monster of a movie .