The Godfather Part II 1974
In AFI’s 2007 revision of their Top 100, The Godfather finished second on the list and The Godfather Part II finished number 32. I was expecting more in the second part because people I talked to said the second was better than the first. I think the story in the second is better. Rather than a gangster movie, it is the history of a family, showing the early life of Don Corleone and what happened to Michael Corleone after the end of the first movie. But even with a better story, the movie isn’t quite as good. Michael is a cipher who seems at once totally in control and yet he makes some bad decisions, and while claiming he wants to go legitimate, makes decisions that keep him on the wrong side of the law. In the story of Don Corleone, Robert De Niro gets very little character development and instead you just see the path he takes. We don’t really know much about the person.
My main problem with the movie is that it is very slow. Some will say it is “deliberate” or “takes its time,” but it is just slow. For a movie that takes its time, there are still things unexplained. Like how do the guys that shoot up Michael’s house end up dead? Much of the rest of the movie centers on Michael getting revenge for that attempt. He goes underground for several months trying to take care of matters, but I don’t know what he was doing all of that time. I’m not real sure how he found out that he was to be killed in Cuba or why he couldn’t call his family during that time. The whole thing with the Congressional investigations seemed unnecessary and the end just kind of fizzles out as Michael takes revenge on some of the people who tried to hurt him (but if he’s a crime boss, you would think that list would be so long he couldn’t get them all). I was disappointed, but the history was interesting and there were some good scenes. I guess a B+.
Written: 01 Jul 2007
Owned on: Blu-ray