I liked 'em, excellent writing, direction, and acting.
In general I don't like mob shows or mob movies, so they'd never make my "Greatest" or "Favorite" list, but they were extremely well-made for their genre.
Excellent or well made for their genre is the understatement of the century. Awe inspiring, greatest direction and greatest acting performances ever captured on screen is more like it.
I don't like mob shows or mob movies either to be honest. Majority of them are cliche and downright terrible. And to be honest- while Goodfellas is certainly a good movie- I'm not the biggest fan of it nor do I think it's some groundbreaking masterpiece. It isn't.
The Godfather I & II aren't mob movies. They are works of cinematic art that just so happen to have their backdrop in that world. You can almost look at them as one movie- and they are really about the corruption of innocence, the downfall of man- and you watch on screen someone completely lose his soul and descend into pure darkness. It's Shakespearean, it's operatic, it's almost biblical. Michael always reminds me of that bible verse- "for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?" Michael literally gains an empire- becomes unfathomably wealthy, one of the most powerful men in the world- and he's sacrificed his soul in the process.
Michael starts off as an idealistic, moral person- a college student who drops out to enlist in the marines and fight in world war II. He's a war hero who has won a purple heart and he plans to get married to a good girl and go back to college. Michael wants nothing to do with his father's business- and he tells his girlfriend that he's not like his father- "that's my family Kay, that's not me". And through a course of events in the "family business" of which he's not a party to and involved in at all, his father and brothers' lives are put in danger. And in order to save his father's life he's faced with an impossible choice- do nothing and let his father die and potentially his brothers- or do something- which is murder the men who tried to murder his father. The first one shows us the beginning of his decline and the root cause of his downfall, and the second one just takes it to ten other levels and he goes to depths you wouldn't ever think possible.
And the way Pacino plays it's- so nuanced and low-key- it's unbelievable how good that performance is. You see the stress of running the empire, the sadness, the pain, the regret- you see him losing grip of himself- and it's all there in his face, his body language, the way he walks- his face looks weathered, his eyes look cold, dead and sad. His performance in II is unlike anything I have ever seen before or since. Pacino is literally astonishing in it. How he didn't win the academy award for best actor- baffling to me.
I'll stop because I could go on for literally hours talking about Part II. It's the greatest accomplishment in the history of film and greatest work of art ever captured on film. I've seen it hundreds of times, and could watch it every single time it's on- even if it's nearly 3 and a half hours long. If it's on- I have to watch- and it grabs me and holds me for nearly 3 and a half hours- end credits go and I think it's been 15 minutes. Only movie that long that I can watch on repeat like it's nothing- no matter how many times I've already seen it- and truly enjoy it and be captured by it.
