THE GODFATHER PART III (1990)
Michael Corleone wanted out. God laughed.
Al Pacino’s eyes are hollowed by guilt and gout in 1979, a legitimate knight of the Church, yet still drowning in blood. Coppola turns the saga operatic: Vatican marble replaces Brooklyn streets, betrayal now wears cardinal red. Andy García burns hot as Vincent, the bastard heir with cobra charm; Sofia Coppola’s Mary is heartbreaking innocence walking toward the bullet meant for her father.
The set-pieces are pure thunder: sun-drenched Sicilian festas exploding into gunfire, the Cavalleria Rusticana climax where every stab lands on the downbeat, and that staircase scream, twenty years after the baptism, still the loudest silence in cinema.
Flawed? Yes. Uneven, sometimes creaky. But mythic. Pacino’s final howl on the opera steps is Shakespeare soaked in regret, Eli Wallach slithers like a smiling snake, and the closing shot, Michael alone with his sins he can never confess, finishes the requiem perfectly.
Not the best chapter, but the necessary funeral. Just when he thought he was out… the devil cashed the check.
Related Movies:
