There are numerous arguments to be made about which installment of the best gangster epic ever dedicated to movie is the superior, however why break up hairs? As really phenomenal as every portion of Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s revered Corleone household saga could also be, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II acquire in energy from every different. Pulpy and Shakespearean, intimate and operatic, Michael Corleone’s devotional fall into the corruptive pull of his household’s legal empire—through Al Pacino’s legend-making efficiency—is an all-too-human and, given its immigrant origins, significantly American tragedy. The story is writ massive with common, generational enchantment, but it’s rendered personally with a luxurious visible sense. Somehow, the story by no means loses sight of the violent, avaricious thrills that made the gangster style so enduringly widespread. And even the saga’s coda, the inferior however nonetheless formidable The Godfather Part Three, affords a potent capstone to the entire bloody mythos.
