This is still mostly The Godfather III, with minor variations here and there, and still suffers from the fact that the story of Michael Corleone was pretty wrapped up in Godfather II - the main plot of this one is largely him planning a business merger with the Vatican, which sees him being largely outsmarted by an accountant and some priests. The plot technically does give him a mafia nemesis played by Eli Wallach, but the nemesis never really gets enough attention to ever be anything particularly important on screen. Andy Garcia's Vincent has a much more active plot but keeps on being overshadowed by Michael's non-moving plot, and the film pretty much comes to a dead halt during the long Sicily sequence before the Opera House climax brings things back to life. Still, it's a beautiful looking film with a couple of great moments here and there, even while you're wishing that some of the loose ends were made more of than they are (Bridget Fonda's journalist in particular gets fairly short shrift, and Talia Shire's turn for the Borgia only really gets a few moments to play with). There's also something weird about Pacino playing this almost-retired character when he was age 50 - he mostly sustains it but it still feels like he's checking out on doing anything active way sooner than he should be. This is probably an improved version of the film everybody has in the back of their Godfather boxed set, and it's worth watching, but it's probably still going to be your third favourite godfather film
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