I think that the first two Godfather films, taken as a whole, are one of the greatest achievements in American filmaking, especially if you can see them with all the deleted footage.
I think that Godfather III was a great movie in its own right, but a huge step down.
For one thing, I just couldn’t buy Al Pacino as the older Michael Corleone, as much as I had to criticize one of my favorite actors. In the first two, Michael was very self-contained, brooding, introverted. In III, he has turned into this jovial, over the top fellow. Could he have mellowed with age? I just don’t see how. After the GF II, I would imagine him becoming harder, colder, and more aloof. It just seemed like a totally different character.
The loss of Tom Hagen was a devastating blow. He was Michael’s moral compass (albeit, a very ineffectual one). By GF III, the supporting cast had been whittled so far down that it just wasn’t interesting enough for Michael to interact with. I thought that Kay’s presence in the third movie was shrill and distracting. They could have saved the money by not rehiring Keaton and hiring Robert Duvall instead.
I think the decision to take it all back to Sicily was interesting but not the best one. My impression of the series is that in the first two movies we saw the Corleone family becoming more Americanized, with the Sicilian scenes an interesting backdrop and comparison showing wherre they had come from. The decision to go completely Old World in the third movie wias a little jarring for me.
I thought Andy Garcia was excellent. Criticizing Sofia Coppola is really like shooting fish in a barrel, but I will anyway…she just brought an awkward, gawky quality to every scene she was in that was a huge distraction.
Still, a great movie, but IMHO, nowhere near the first two.