Artwork | Resume | Video Picks | Softball | Vote | Meet Mike
Get your own Free Home PageParamount Pictures, having previously made cinematic history with "Love Story," very easily will top that with the release of Mario Puzo's bestseller as adapted to the screen by Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola. With advance guarantees equal to twice the cost of the film, the company made the unprecedented move of world premiering the Albert S. Ruddy production in five Manhattan theatres. Aside from being unquestionably a top grosser, the film gives Marlon Brando his best role in a decade. The Academy Award winner has had an unusually long string of indifferent films, that jinx being broken here. In concert with Brando's emoting, top honors go to a fine trio of young actors: Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall, as well as to Richard Castellano as a comic killer. While there have been changes from the novel, the film is both compelling and powerful. The violence entirely merits an R, and more sensitive stomachs will take offense. Technicolor-filmed in and around New York City, "The Godfather" has faithfully captured the post-war era. Coppola has given great insight into the inner workings of the Mafia (here called the family or the syndicate) and the particular code of its members. "The Godfather" means business.
Reviewed March 27, 1972 by Box Office Magaize
Artwork | Resume | Video Picks | Softball | Vote | Meet Mike
Get your own Free Home Page