The Godfather: Part III 1990

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Most film sequels are strictly optional. The Godfather Part III is inevitable, and as such it's irresistible. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Represents a certain moral improvement over its predecessors by refusing to celebrate and condemn violence and duplicity in the same breath, or at least to the same degree. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The movie, a heady thicket of political intrigue and double crosses, is slower, talkier, and more prosaic than the first two films, and its narrative seams sometimes show. And yet it's more than the sum of its mazelike convolutions. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Godfather Part III is a good movie, with moments of rare power, but it is not a great one -- a reason why many fans of the series have voiced their disappointment. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It is, I suspect, not even possible to understand this film without knowing the first two, and yet, knowing them, Part III works better than it should, evokes the same sense of wasted greatness, of misdirected genius. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: The film is a slow fuse with a big bang -- one that echoes through every family whose own tragedy is an aching for things past and loved ones lost. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: The acting is merely passable, several characters are given nothing to do, and Michael's paranoid self-pity lends the film an absurd morality: Coppola expects us to sympathise with the semblance of virtue. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: The Godfather Part III matches its predecessors in narrative intensity, epic scope, socio-political analysis, physical beauty and deep feeling for its characters and milieu. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: It may be that Coppola was right to put off filing this last installment all these years; from the evidence here, he had nothing more to say. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: [An] offer director Francis Ford Coppola should have refused. Read more