The Coppolas and the Corleones return for the final chapter in the Godfather saga. I had held off on seeing this movie - many of my friends (and indeed, many people who have seen The Godfather Part III) all said the same thing: that it was not as good as the first two movies in the series; that it was a good movie in its own right, but couldn't compare to its predecessors; that the plot was complicated and implausible, and that Sofia Coppola's acting is worth a mob hit on its own.

But this is The Godfather Part III. You can't not see it. 

The plot starts out well - Michael Corleone is trying to take the family's business legitimate (and in doing so, wash his hands of decades of bloodshed and corruption). Fair enough, it's what he tried to do (well, talked about doing) in The Godfather Part II. But striking a deal with the Catholic Church? It's an ambitious move, both by Don Corleone and Francis Ford Coppola. Maybe, with this being the last planned installment in the Godfather series, Coppola and writer Mario Puzo decided to finish things off with a flourish. Flourishes certainly abound, from the corridors and spiral staircases of the Vatican, to the most ambitious mass mob hit in history, culminating in gunshots on the steps of the Teatro Massimo. But is it too much of a good thing?

The Godfather Part III will have the hallmarks that fans of the first two Godfather movies will look for - murder, family, honor, loyalty, betrayal, mesmerizing acting, beautiful cinematography and a musical score to make your heart weep. Perhaps Coppola and Puzo didn't want to ape the success of the original movies, hence their decision to set the story of The Godfather Part III against real-world events: the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, and the death of Pope John Paul I. It's one thing when the affairs of the Corleones, messy as though they may be, strike at characters who exist in the worlds of fiction and our imagination. When that line is crossed, and the romanticized world of the Godfather makes it forays into the real world - not just the real world, but a venerable, established real world (albeit one with its faults) - that's when suspending the belief becomes a little tricky. Now we've gone from street vendor shootouts and prostitute homicides to assassinations in the Vatican. It's a tall order, and Puzo & Coppola should be credited for being ambitious and not making The Godfather Part III a carbon copy of the epics that preceded it. That said… it's a tall order, and one that is, on occasion, a bit too much to swallow.

Maybe The Godfather saga became a victim of its own success - with Parts I and II being among the most highly-regarded movies of all time, and with such great characters and stories, how can you follow in those footsteps? Not easily. 

(contd.)