Point the first: I'm watching Godfather 2 with my folks. Because they're old and have early bedtimes, we don't get very far through the film each day and I have a lot of time to think about it.
Point the second: this chart, purporting to claim, among other things, that The Matrix is a better film than Jurassic Park or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, that the bloated mess that is Judgment Day is better than the original Terminator, and that Godfather 2 is better than Godfather 1.
All of those claims are wrong, but I'm going to focus on the last one.
Now I should start by saying that for all its faults, Godfather 2 is still a pretty good film and probably deserved its Oscar(s). But, it's also nowhere near as good a movie as Godfather 1. Here are two things I learned from listening to the Godfather 2 commentary:
- Francis Ford Coppola had no intention of making a second Godfather film and basically had to have his arm twisted by the studio into growing them a second money tree.
- Coppola demanded, as a condition of him doing the film, that the studio have no oversight over the film whatsoever.
So you had a director who was not interested in the project and nobody at the studio who could countermand a single decision he made. This is not a recipe for success (cough Star Wars prequels cough), and it's not surprising that Godfather 2 is a big, bloated, confusing mess.
The basic core of the film can be summed up pretty neatly: Michael sacrifices his family for the sake of his Family. He separates from Kay and murders Fredo to protect his criminal interests. That can be a pretty compelling story, but the way it was told boggles the mind.
Hey, Everyone, Remember The New Guy
So the biggest and most glaring flaw in the film is, as Coppola explains in his commentary, he couldn't get the guy who played Clemenza (the fat caporegime who ran up all those steps at the end of the previous movie to blow away a couple of mobsters in an elevator) to come back for the sequel. So he killed Clemenza off off-screen and then did a find-and-replace on his script and assigned all of Clemenza's actions and dialogue to a guy named Frank Pentangeli, who we ain't never met before. And all the characters are going on about how he's been in the family for forever and it's like hey waitaminute! This wouldn't be so glaring except that they gave basically every random extra hitman from the first film a speaking role this time around. You couldn't make Rocco Lampone, who was basically Clemenza's go-to muscle and probably his Number Two, take over his role, could you? That wouldn't make sense or anything.
And on the other side, you have Virgin Roth who was doing business with Vito Corleone since Michael was a baby. Which is why Roth IRA was not in either the first film or the flashbacks in this film! What? Huh?
Wait, What Are You Trying To Do, Again?
Now, I can explain to you the plot of the first film, because it's really simple. Here we go: Vito Corleone wants to keep running his family business as usual, but Don Barzini wants to bring the drug trade into New York. So Barzini has Tattaglia have Sollozo go to the Corleones with a proposition, and when Vito shoots it down, the bad guys try to have him killed. I'm not sure exactly who gave the order and it really doesn't matter because Barzini ends up backing the Tattaglias to the hilt anyway. So in comes Michael Corleone, Vito's son, who's stayed outside the family business up until now. What does he want? It's pretty simple: he wants his family to be safe. So he takes it upon himself to kill Sollozo, which gets him exiled to Sicily for a few years. By the time he comes back, his brother Santino's been killed, so now he's basically in charge. And the actions that he takes at the end are done to, as he says, settle all family business.
Now in the second film, what does anybody want? Michael wants another casino in Nevada. But he also wants some deal or another with Roth that lets him go to Cuba in time for the Revolution. And he wants to dodge some sort of federal indictment. ...okay, I don't get it. He's up to his eyeballs in crime now, he's not just doing it to protect "the family." Yeah, got that. But at the same time we can't really care about his objectives because they are so very vague.
Meanwhile, Roth wants to kill Michael. Because he's old and brain-addled? Because Michael had Moe Green killed? Because Michael didn't lean on Pentangeli enough when it came to dealing with the Rosato brothers? I don't know. In the first movie the assassination attempt on Vito made sense because Vito was an obstacle to the drug trade. The assassination on Sonny made sense because Sonny was waging a war against them. But here we try to kill Don Corleone because that's the formula now. (Speaking of formula, you notice how we went from a horse's head in a bed to a murdered prostitute in a bed? Shock value ain't what it used to be.)
So what you're left with is a plot that don't make sense, played out in a series of beautiful, underlit images. I can see why this film won awards, but that don't make it good.
Things That Don't Make No Sense, An Incomplete List
How old are Michael's children supposed to be? Sonny was murdered listening to a radio broadcast from 1953, before Michael returned, and when Michael reunites with Kay he says he's been back at least a year. So Michael's oldest child could not have been born until late 1954 at the earliest, but he's old enough to have his first communion in 1958? See what I mean about this movie not making sense? Oh, okay, Kay retcons it by saying that Michael and she reunited seven years ago, not four. Okay well then you've just retroactively put a continuity error in the first film, so congratulations.
In case you thought I forgot about the flashbacks: Why does Don Fannuci accept $100 when he wanted $600? Was he that impressed by Vito's testicular fortitude?
Okay, back to the present. How did Johnny Ola make Fredo think that opening the drapes in Michael's bedroom would somehow be beneficial to Ola's negotiation position? How did Fredo open the drapes without Kay noticing? Does the Don's brother have unfettered access to the Don's bedroom while the Don's wife is sleeping there? Alternatively, did Kay not notice the drapes were open while she changed into her nightgown? Who murdered the two assassins? Are we supposed to believe that Fredo "I dropped my gun while my own father was being shot" Corleone learned how to handle a pistol and take out two trained killers?
Does Senator Geary really never figure out that he's been suckered and framed for the murder of a prostitute? How come Michael doesn't murder him for walking out on the committee hearing and leaving Michael to twist in the wind?
Why does Johnny Ola wear bright orange suits? Who wears bright orange suits in 1958?
So after the assassination attempt, Michael visits Roth and tells him Pentangeli tried to have him killed. Then he visits Pentangeli and says it was Roth. Then, later, in Cuba, he's made up his mind that it's Roth because he tries to have Roth killed. Okay, yes, Roth has the motive (probably) and Pentangeli does not, but then why would Roth believe that Michael thought it was Pentangeli? When the Rosato brothers try to kill Pentangeli, are they actually trying to kill him? Or are they deliberately leaving him alive so that he can testify against Michael? Did they know about the federal investigation? If they are just trying to kill him, why bother pretending they're doing it on Michael's orders? When is the audience supposed to figure out that it was Roth who tried to have Michael killed, and not Pentangeli or even Geary? (Wouldn't that have been a neat counterpoint to the "Senators and presidents don't have people killed."/"Who's being naive, Kay?" exchange from the previous film?) Pentangeli and Cicci both testify before the subcommittee; Cicci murdered a guy in a revolving door on Michael's orders but he's not going to testify about that? Why does Pentangeli change his testimony when he sees his brother? How come the chairman of the subcommittee doesn't close the courtroom? How did Michael get Pentangeli's brother to show up? '
How come no subsequent attempts are ever made on Michael's life?
Why, aside from the fact that the film was being made in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, are we treated to five minutes of Kay saying "abortion" over and over again?
How did a man in as poor health as Roth was get out of Revolutionary Cuba? How did a man with a mental defect as bad as Fredo's get out of Revolutionary Cuba?
Lastly, two things I really like
The lighting and the music.
The end.
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