The Godfather review

The Godfather review (1972)

If I could drescribe the Godfather in two words it would be "incohearent disaster".

My main problem with the alleged 5 star hit from 1972 is its nonsesical narritive. There seems to be 100 irrelivent plot points and i found it hard to follow as the narritive would be compleatly abandond and a whole new one picked up. Absoleutly no emtional connection or backstory was given to any of the characters which made the film feel so shallow and rushed, when some of the "important" characters died for example when Marlon Brandos character died, THE LITTERAL orginal godfather i felt absolutley nothing at all, and to be honest I felt so bored I fast foward the magority of the scene. 

I found AL Pacino (Michael's) character arch to be devastatingly disapointing. I understand he wanted nothing to do with the business and was agasint it but the attemped murder of his father drove the primal instict for revenge out of his pure inoccent soul, which lead him down a path of enternal wickedness from which he could not come back. But what essential was portayed was nowhere as expressive as that. He showed no inner conflict over his choices and seemed to very eaily decide he was going to be a gangster, the go into hiding somewhere in remote Italy where he married this random Italian woman ,despite having a girlfriend back in america, after what seemed a matter of seconds of being there only for that woman to be blown up whilst in a car. The loss of his wife is never braught back up and doesn't seem to affect micheal in the slightest, so essencially that whole narritive was a compleate waste of time. I understand Micheal became emotionally closed off due to his new position of power but it was acted like he was bored and didn't even want to be there, and throughout, even before his murdering of thoes two men his acting was poor and neutral I felt little to no emotion from him.

I understant that Marlon Brandos performance of the godfather was iconic and has inspiered a lot of modern and pop culture refrences, however i could not understand him at all he mumbled his way through the performance ontop of the audio quality being abismal. No excuse for a big budget film in 1970s to have woeful audio quality. Another issue I had was that I could not distinguish the majority of characters from one another. They all just seemed to come and go and theres was no real explinantion of who they were, FAR to many irrelivent characters, needed to be cut way down! There was also an unsessary scene of one of the mobsters is beating up this man who I belived kissed his wife's sister it's very unclear, I understand this was to give context to how ill tempered and violent these men can be but that kind of thing should be done at the start and not almost 1 hour into this 3 hour film. There was also constant reference the "The five families" and how they had started a war and all this other stuff. But not once are all the five families explained we never explicity meet any of them and it's unclear if they are the ones doing all the hits on the Corleno family or at least which family/families are responsible. 

There were some parts of the film that I respected because of it's time. I do understant my heavy critismism of the film maybe due to my age and watching the films of today that are alot more refinded and the art of film making has become somewhat perfected. I thought the iconic scene of the horese head in the bed was excellent. It looked very realistic condidering it was the 1970s, it did not look like a paper mache job at all, also there where scenes of people bing shot which may have been executed comically to a degree but the fsx was amaing it genuinly looked like the had been shot in head, there was a clear and realistic bullet hole, which is why i think it's release was recived so well. Because it's very much a mans film, full of big tough guys and who do lots of gory voilent things and at the time of the 70s it was mainly men and boys who went to the cinema which is why it blew up, also the all star cast helped validated it credibility. I was also impressed to a degree with the cinematograpthy and editiding it was executed flawlessly with a few little nuggests of style to keep the viewers intereseted. 

All over the film was technically excellent but it was the sloppy narrative that let it down, if that had been refined and let all the other amazing micro elements speak for it's self i feel as though I would have enjoyed it alot more and felt like it earned thoes 5 stars.