Watched: 08/10/2025
Format: 4K
Viewing: third or fourth
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Released on Christmas Day in 1990, I saw The Godfather Part III (1990) with the men of the Steans Family. I was 15 and had already seen the other Godfather movies a few times by this point. Going in, I was aware the new film was not supposed to be up to the levels of the two prior movies, but was still interested.
It was... fine? Good, even. But I didn't love it. I do recall thinking "this Mary Corleone is super cute" and being aware she was Coppola's own daughter.
Before the movie was released, the two things discussed most were that Robert Duvall would not be in the movies, and that Sofia Coppola as Mary. All this, despite a cast starring Pacino, Andy Garcia, Eli Wallach and Talia Shire, a winding script that seemed to be trying to say things about power and those who wield it and where, and some of the best photography of the decade.
The day after seeing the movie, I drove to Austin to visit some friends, who - knowing I was a fan of the first films - proudly held up the tickets they'd bought for a matinee of The Godfather Part III, and so it was, I saw the movie twice in about 24 hours.
What I recall is what everyone recalls - that Wynona Ryder dipped out for some reason before shooting began, and Coppola called up his daughter and put her front and center. Not that odd, really, and I can see the thinking. Francis Coppola was behind the camera and had co-written again with Puzo. Coppola's father had written the score to the first two movies, his sister was playing Connie, and now he'd had his daughter playing Michael's daughter. Multi-generational symmetry.
Sofia Coppola, who had been in a handful of movies had mostly been listed as things like "Girl at Parade", and did not have a rich acting background. Then and now, she took it on the chin from critics, perhaps because of what they saw as Coppola's hubris or nepotism and a fairly flat performance.
At the time, I remember thinking she wasn't great, and then her final death was what had earned her the bad notices.
Honestly, I am not sure I've seen The Godfather Part III since those two viewings back in December of 1990. It's possible I have - and given how much of the movie I remembered even in this new cut, I must have seen it again at some point. But I think if I'd seen it since I was 19 or so, I also would have been aware that Eli Wallach is in the film. I've even owned a copy of Godfather III on DVD that I simply never watched the thing, sticking with the first two films.
A few years ago I became aware that Coppola had recut Godfather Part III and given it the ponderous title of The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (1990/2020), and I was curious and picked up the 4K of all three movies, think I would make a film fest out of it. But we didn't, watching the first film in February and the second in April.
After finishing the novel of The Godfather, it occurred to me that now was the time to watch the final installment and see what The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone was all about.
First - as a stand-alone movie, which this absolutely is not, it's an engaging film. The characters are rich, the sets and cinematography as stunning as anything from the era, location shoots are gorgeous, and Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire and Andy Garcia turn in award-calibre performances. As a story about a mob family getting involved with the Vatican in events that echo the real-life Vatican banking scandal of 1982, and the brief tenure of Pope John Paul I - it's perhaps too understated, and the characters who are not Corleone blood relatives spend too much time off-screen to feel like the forces they need to be in the film.
But the movie only uses that scandal to do what Part 1 and Part 2 of the series did, and that's suggest a world in which the Corleones are wrapped up in big-scale historical events where there may have been mafia involvement (you can Google those flicks or get hep to film and history).
With the mafia getting into bed with the Vatican, the statements about who has power and who is corrupt - and where does it all end? - must have been like catnip for Puzo and Coppola. The arc of Michael Corleone, who has been swearing he'd go legit since taking over the family in the first film, reaches its apex as he tries to extricate himself from the old family business and finds the past is still with him, and that even the Vatican operates in a world of corruption.
As a story about generational legacy and trying to find redemption, the film works. And as part of a 9 hour epic, works like few other things in cinema.
Michael releases Anthony from his dreams for him - maybe seeing what would have happened if he'd not had to step in as his father's most capable child - and wishing for Anthony to be something better. He wants to protect Mary and sets her up as head of the Vito Corleone Foundation, a role that will allow her to be a philanthropist and legitimize the name of the Corleones. Meanwhile, Sonny's illegitimate son by Lucy Mancini, Vincent (Andy Garcia), appears - and Michael, realizing he needs some sort of heir to handle the remaining Corleone old family business, recruits Vincent and perpetuates the lessons of Vito Corleone, which are lessons Vito took from Sicily and America.
Vincent bears Sonny's desire to fight, but has Michael's desire to learn. Over the roughly year of time I think the movie takes place, Vincent takes to the role of the heir apparent like a fish to water. While also falling for and bedding his own cousin, Mary. Echoes of the lessons of Vito Corleone are passed now from Michael to Vincent rather than Vito to his children.
The old mob ties upon which he built his fortune still want to "wet their beak", and power players in Europe are not thrilled to have the Corleone Family moving in - and so it's mob war again. Further, as stated above, as Michael goes higher, even to the Pope, he finds corruption at that seat of holy power. And, of course, it's not a Godfather movie without a series of deaths at the end to tie up loose ends.
But this time, a stray bullet finds Mary.
At the time, Sofia Coppola's delivery was considered odd, her final line receiving derision. Watching it now, I think it's kind of... exactly right?
I understand that Coda cuts down Mary's scenes for length and some altogether from Godfather III. She's in there enough, she pushes forward the stories of Vincent and Michael, and I don't ever not believe her. But there's also some dialogue that feels like it was never going to work no matter who delivered the scene, and in a world that screamed to make Kristen Stewart and Dakota Johnson movie stars, it's just absurd that Coppola takes a particular hit for a less than energetic performance.
And, look, she's acting against some of the greats of the 20th Century. That's a position that was setting her up for disaster.
This and Heat may be the last Pacino roles I think of that aren't so weird and over the top, I have no idea what he's doing. Diane Keaton was in perfect form here, recreating Kay as strong but guarded, decades of putting up with Michael changed her fundamentally. Talia Shire is now on Connie v. 3 or 4, and it's a phenomenal progression - she is her father's daughter.
35 years on, I get the choice by father and daughter to frame Mary's death as they did - and it works in a way I never was going to appreciate at 15. Despite the fact I knew exactly what was coming, I was surprised I got a little misty this time during the final opera house steps sequence. Sure, Mary was the innocent caught in the crossfire, but this is the final and unavoidable eventual failure of Michael, and Pacino's horror is played perfectly. It's the culmination of everything from roughly 9 hours of movie taking place over 80 years.
If I say the movie is a good one about redemption - it's because there is no redemption. Michael has seen men he knows killed at his order. He's killed business associates, he's killed Connie's husband, and he's killed his own brother. What Michael has done in the name of protecting his own family is irredeemable - in part because he hasn't protected anyone.
Anthony is safe as he's split from the family. Mary's very proximity gets her killed. Kay, who dreads Michael, witnesses the death of her own daughter, after a lifetime of pain for ever getting in bed with the man. Connie has become a black widow, as vicious as any Corleone, delivering murder in a cannoli as a friend. The innocent Apollonia was killed as someone else tried to get at Michael. The safety Michael believed he was providing was a death sentence.
In the original cut, Michael dies, alone and unmourned somewhere in Sicily. It makes it's point, and echoes the death of Vito Corleone, dying with only un-understanding innocents to see it (kids with Vito, puppies with Michael).
In this new cut, Michael is alive... and alone with his thoughts, a decade on alive and untouched, the world abandoned him... or, he's in exile. He's been damned to live with his pain, and he doesn't get an out in this cut. He's still alive. Maybe he dies a second after the screen goes black
I like this choice better. Michael Corleone will be trapped in a bit of celluloid hell with no reprieve, and it's not moralizing in some lazy Hayes Code way - it's a reflection of every decision he made along the way when he agreed to shoot Sollozzo and the police captain.
Anyway, yeah, I think the telling of the crime story lacks clarity and needs either more exposition or explanation - maybe forego those exciting set pieces like the murder of the Commission for building more of a relationship with the adversaries. But the opera sequence is, honestly stunning and a worth review if it's been a while. Free of the common consensus of 1990, and with this new cut, it makes an argument for itself I wasn't really expecting.
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