Andy Garcia – Movie Musings

The third film in the series is a decent effort – but pales in comparison to the others

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Al Pacino (Michael Corleone), Diane Keaton (Kay Adams-Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), Andy Garcia (Vincent Corleone), Eli Wallach (Don Altobello), Joe Mantegna (Joey Zasa), George Hamilton (BJ Harrison), Bridget Fonda (Grace Hamilton), Sofia Coppola (Mary Corleone), Raf Vallone (Cardinal Lamberto), Franc D’Ambrosio (Anthony Corleone), Donal Donnelly (Archbishop Gilday), Richard Bright (Al Neri), Al Martino (Johnny Fontane), John Savage (Father Andrew Hagen), Helmut Berger (Frederick Keinszig), Don Novello (Dominic Abbandando), Franco Citti (Calo)

Coppola wanted to call it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. He got his wish decades later with a belated re-edit release. But at the time, the studio wasn’t having it: this would be a full-blown Third Part to The Godfather. Problem is, those are some very big shoes to step into and The Godfather Part III wasn’t the genre-defining masterpiece its predecessors was. Instead, it’s a decent, melancholic gangster film with touches of King Lear. However, when you are following the sublime being “pretty good” winds up looking like “pretty awful”. The Godfather Part III became the infamous “fuhgeddaboutit” chapter in the saga, the one for completists and those who watch out of duty. On its own merits its fine, but perhaps it was a doomed venture from the start.

It’s 1979 and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has aged and mellowed. All his life he’s talked about getting out, and now it seems he finally has. He’s set up a charitable foundation, he’s been honoured by the Vatican and is rebuilding relationships with his children: daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola), now head of his foundation and son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), an opera singer. Even Kay (Diane Keaton) is speaking to him again. Michael is grooming Vincent (Andy Garcia), illegitimate son of his brother Sonny, to take over the reins of the crime family. But then, they drag him back in. Bailing out the Vatican Bank, Michael finds is double-crossed by a collection of Euro-banking crooks, corrupt Church leaders and rival Mafiosi. Will he survive the dangers a return to Sicily will bring?

The unspoken secret of The Godfather is that everyone was always there for the money: they just also had something to prove the first two times and the fire in their bellies to turn gangster grist into cinematic beauty. Fast forward 15 years later, and there hangs an air of “give the studio what it wants” about Part III, coupled with a willingness to rest on laurels. Coppola agreed to do it because his last few films were bombs and he needed the money. Pacino demanded – and got – a massive sum. Keaton coined it. Robert Duvall asked for $1.5 million, didn’t get it and walked. Coppola agreed to turn the script around in lightening time to rush the film to the screen for the inevitable box-office and awards bonanza. No one involved really did the film for either love or passion.

Coppola’s script, written to a deadline, is torn awkwardly between two plots, neither completely satisfactory. His interest lies with the question of whether absolution (of any sort) for Michael is possible. This is the film Coppola wanted to make, but it keeps losing ground though to the other, a complex conspiracy thriller, riffing on real-life events in the Vatican. This conspiracy is frequently dense, difficult to follow and (frankly) not particularly interesting as it trudges through Papal politics and investment banking, seeming existing to provide faces for the inevitable violent montage of inventive hits.

A Part III that zeroed in on Michael himself, his guilts and shame, would have been both distinctive and unique. But The Godfather Part III fudges this. Crucially, the Michael we see here – for all he would have mellowed with age – feels very different from the cold, buttoned-down, calculating figure from the first two. Pacino – perhaps remembering the pressure of Part II that left him exhausted – invests it with more “hoo-hah”. This twinkly Michael, smiles to hide his regrets – when you feel, in reality, years of pressure would have turned him into even more of a murderous Scrooge. I also can’t believe he would be this close to his now adult children. Pacino embraces the moments of raw pain when they come, but this character just doesn’t quite mesh with his previous performances (and his hair looks just plain wrong).

The rushed production further fatally holed this personal plot below the water-line. Duvall was originally intended to serve as the film’s ‘antagonist’, the film planned as a very personal battle between the last two ‘brothers’. Duvall’s departure ripped the heart out of this script, his role redistributed between George Hamilton’s anonymous lawyer, Talia Shire’s Connie (now turned inexplicable consigliere) and Eli Wallach’s treacherous Don Altobello. None of these make any real impact. Rushed production also meant Winona Ryder dropped out of the crucial role of Michael’s daughter, Coppola taking the (disastrous) last-minute decision to cast his daughter Sofia instead.

Sofia Coppola has suffered more than enough from lacerating reviews of her performance (the level of vitriol poured on her is shocking to read today). Let’s just say, while a great director, she is no actor. But then, neither really is Franc D’Ambrosio playing her brother. Both children never become either interesting or dynamic presences. Since their relationship – and the flowering of it – with Michael is crucial to the film’s emotional impact, it’s a fatal flaw. No matter how hard Pacino works, these scenes just don’t ring true. There is no sense of decades of anger and resentment. The drama seeps out of the family scenes and Mary becomes such a flat and two-dimensional character that her impact on the other principle characters never engages.

Sofia Coppola similarly struggles in her romantic scenes with Andy Garcia, again despite his best efforts. Garcia is the best thing in the film, full of cocksure confidence and instinctive cunning, channelling the best elements of Sonny and Michael into a character we’d dearly like to see more of. His facing down of two murderous home-invading hoods is the film’s most memorable moment while Garcia also does excellent work charting Vincent’s slow acceptance of the tragic sacrifices – the killing of parts of your nature – that being ‘the Godfather’ demands. Diane Keaton is also excellent as a far more seasoned and stronger Kay than we’ve seen before.

The Godfather Part III has several fine moments, even if it never coalesces into anything more than a decent film. Coppola restages with assurance and poise versions of previous scenes from the saga – a Little Italy festival assassination, Sicilian countryside violence, an assassin surreptitiously moving through a quiet building, Kay closing a door by choice, the montage of killings – mixed with large scale moments (a helicopter attack on a crime boss meeting is the film’s most ‘action moment’). He works really hard to channel a sense of melancholy: Michael is crippled with diabetes, plagued with guilt for his brother’s death, running to stand still and do the right thing. Pacino’s strongest moments are these moments of rawer emotion: his cloister confession to the future Pope is a masterclass in letting simmering pain suddenly rush to the surface.

But The Godfather Part III always feels like a perfunctory re-heat of key moments, not quite mixed successfully with a redemption (or lack of) tale. This film needed to be a more sombre, focused story about an army of chickens coming home to roost. It needed a stronger sense of Michael desperately scrambling to bring back together the family he was so desperate to protect that he destroyed it. Instead, it’s torn between recapturing old glories and being hampered by fudged attempts to provide emotional depth, linked to a poor structure, unfortunate casting choices and lack of focus. It’s not a bad film – but it is not a great one. And for the third in the greatest series of all time, that wasn’t good enough.

Super stylish cops and robbers thriller, as Costner and Connery take on Capone

Director: Brian de Palma

Cast: Kevin Costner (Eliot Ness), Sean Connery (Jimmy Malone), Andy Garcia (George Stone), Robert De Niro (Al Capone), Charles Martin Smith (Oscar Wallace), Patricia Clarkson (Catherine Ness), Billy Drago (Frank Nitti), Richard Bradford (Chief Mike Dorsett), Jack Kehoe (Walter Payne)

“What are you prepared to do!”

It’s the motto of this electric law-enforcement film, one of those all-time classics that provides endlessly quotable lines and moments you can’t forget. It’s crammed with iconic moments, from its brilliantly quotable dialogue from David Mamet, via its wonderful music score, to its artful film literacy and iconic performances. If there is an untouchable film, this one is pretty close. I love it.

It’s 1930, prohibition is in full force and Chicago is ruled by gangland kingpin Al Capone (Robert De Niro). Young Federal Officer Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is thrown into Chicago to end Capone’s reign and stamp out the illegal liquor business. Not surprisingly, it’s hard to know who to trust in a town as stinking as this one, until a chance meeting with disillusioned beat cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) helps him find a group of people he can trust – “Untouchables” who aren’t going to go on Capone’s payroll. But to bring Capone down he’s going to have to embrace the “Chicago way” and start to bend his strict moral code.

Listening to Brian de Palma talk about the making of the movie, you can’t help but suspect he felt he was doing one for the suits rather than one from the heart. Well perhaps he should do that more often, because The Untouchables is a lean, mean, hugely entertaining action-adventure, that plays with genuine ideas and but also nails every single moment. Every scene is shot with a confident, compelling swagger – the sort of thing that reminds you what a conneseur of high-class pulp de Palma can be. The Untouchables plays out like a super-brainy graphic novel adaptation, and every scene sings. There is barely a duff moment in there.

A lot of this comes straight from David Mamet’s brilliant script. Really, with lines like this, moments as well-crafted as this, characters as clearly, brilliantly defined as the ones on show here, you can’t go wrong. Quotable lines fall from the actors’ lips like the gifts they are: “He brings a knife, you bring a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago Way!” It’s dialogue like this that just has ageless appeal, the sort of stuff you find yourself trying to work into day-to-day conversation.

But Mamet’s script is also sharply clever. It swiftly lays out at the start Ness’ moral compass, his code – and then, as the film progresses, it cleverly shows the whys and wherefores for Ness compromising these. Needless to say, the man at the end of the film is totally different from the bright-eyed naïve agent we met at the start. Mamet also brilliantly works shades of grey into all our heroes, while scripting some compelling moments of grandstanding bastardy that an actor as marvellous as De Niro is just waiting to send to the back of the net.

De Niro was of course the inevitable choice as Capone. Bob Hoskins was contracted just in case De Niro said no (when told De Niro would be taking the job but he would get a $20k pay-out for his time, Hoskins told de Palma he’d be thrilled to hear about any other movies de Palma didn’t want him to be in), but it had to be Bobby. The film drops Capone in at key moments: the film opens with the swaggering bully delighted at holding court with English newspapers while being shaved (de Palma’s camera draws down from an overhead shot, like a spider descending from the ceiling, to reveal him in the barber’s chair) – a flash of danger emerges when the barber slips and cuts Capone’s face (de Niro’s flash of fury, followed by his decision to pardon – combined with the barber’s terror – is perfect). Later Capone rages at Ness, hosts a very messy dinner party with a baseball bat, and weeps at the theatre while a key character bleeds to death at his home (a brilliant example of de Palma’s mastery of B-movie cost cutting). He’s the perfect dark heart.

And opposite him you need a white knight – even if it a white knight who is set to be sullied. I’m not sure Kevin Costner ever topped his performance here, in the film that made him a superstar overnight. Looking like the perfect boy scout – his fresh faced earnestness is one of his finest qualities – Costner also has a WASPish hardness under the surface. The burning determination he has to destroy Capone, his disgust at the murder and chaos Capone deals in, is never in doubt – just as his initial naïveté about how to end Capone is all too clear. Costner masterfully shows how each event pushes Ness a step or two further in bending his rules, to fight Capone’s ruthlessness with ruthlessness of his own. “What are you prepared to do!” Malone asks him, and the film is about Ness working out how far his moral compass can stretch. I can’t think of many films that so completely and successfully have the lead character change as much as Costner does here without it feeling rushed or forced. It’s a wonderful performance.

But the film is stolen – and it’s no surprise, as he has the showiest part, most of the best lines, and of course the movie-star cool – by Connery. It’s easy to mock Connery’s blatantly Scottish Irish cop – he gives the accent a go for his first scene, but promptly drops it. What Connery’s performance is really all about is an old dog who never got a chance to do the right thing, finally being given the licence, the support and the inspiration from the younger man to clean up this filthy city. And Connery rages in the film, a force of nature, the perfect mentor, the cop who against all initial expectations is prepared to go through any and all risks to get Capone. He’s the samurai beat cop, and Connery (Oscar-winning) growls through Mamet’s dialogue with all the love of the seasoned pro letting rip. It’s an iconic performance – and led to a five year purple patch of great films and roles for Connery.

But the film works partly because of these great performances and the script, but also because of de Palma’s direction. The pacing is absolutely spot-on, the camera full of moments of flash and invention. Every action sequence has its own distinct tone, from the horse riding hi-jinks of a Canadian border interception of a booze truck, to the dark slaughter late at night of one of the film’s main characters (a masterful, Hitchcockian piece of genius by the way that uses the POV shot to exceptional effect). A late roof chase sizzles with a ruthless energy.

But the real highpoint of the action is of course that famous train-station shoot out. Allegedly the original plans on the day had to be ditched due to budgetary reasons – so cinephile de Palma pulled a sublime Battleship Potemkin homage out of his locker. Shot in near silence, save for gunshots, the bounce of a pram falling down the station stairs (baby on board) and a spare score from Morricone, the sequence is true bravura cinema, both hugely exciting and strangely endearing for all those who know anything about the history of cinema.

De Palma and Mamet keep the story focused, clear and every scene has a clear purpose and goal. There isn’t a single superfluous character or moment. Everything is perfectly assembled to serve the overall impact of the film. It’s gripping, entertaining and compelling: the sort of film where if you catch it at the right age it has you for life. Ennio Morricone’s operatic score is perfect for the film, underlining and emphasising every moment and effectively sweeping you up. Costner and Connery are superb, De Niro is perfect, the film is a gift that has something new to give every time you see it.