Godfather 3 how long

He almost feels like he would have fit right at home in the original films and has that young Pacino energy. It never felt like part of the same story. Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert. Al Pacino as Don Michael Corleone. Diane Keaton as Kay Adams Michelson. Talia Shire as Connie Corleone Rizzi. Collider spoke with studio sources on Wednesday afternoon and learned the new director's cut will clock in at 2 hours and 37 minutes mins.

For reference, the original Godfather III has a runtime of 2 hours and 42 minutes mins. Sources did not confirm what will be lost in the five minutes of footage now chopped from Coppola's new cut. However, in a statement on the forthcoming release of The Death of Michael Corleone , Coppola shared his approach to crafting a cut which is true to both his vision and Godfather author Mario Puzo's vision which in turn implies that chops to the final chapter of this trilogy will indeed be made.

The party scene flows easily as it brings every character up to date. Diane Keaton is as deft as ever as Michael's ex-wife Kay, who pleads with him to allow their son, Tony, to pursue a career as an opera singer. Kay can be chilling.

Connie, played with glorious sharpness and wit by Talia Shire, has morphed into Lady Macbeth. Mafia princesses can never run things, but they can pull the strings. It's Connie who ruthlessly tells Vincent, "You're the only one in this family with my father's strength.

If anything happens to Michael I want you to strike back. The film builds to a final tragic sequence at the opera, where Michael is pursued by hitmen Credit: Alamy.

Vincent is central to many of the set pieces. During a meeting of Mafia heads in Atlantic City, when Michael announces he is out of the crime business, a helicopter approaches the window and shoots most of them dead. Vincent rushes Michael, the main target, to safety. The intrigue and rapid-fire violence in the perfectly orchestrated scene might obscure the real point: Michael can't escape his past.

That attack causes his cry: "Just when I thought I was out He is raw and angrily over-the-top in some scenes, but modulates those outbursts with quieter moments. When a stress-induced diabetic attack sends him to the hospital, in his delusional state he calls out Fredo's name. Pacino shows us a conflicted Michael, weakened yet clinging to power. The tone becomes more ominous and the themes more spiritual when the entire family goes to Sicily for Tony's opera debut. There are spoilers here, but the time limit on spoilers has expired after 30 years.

Michael grapples with the Sicilian Mafia, for reasons linked to the Immobiliare deal, but that is less important than his inner crisis. He makes a confession to a cardinal, breaking down in tears as he says, "I'm beyond redemption. Michael gives Vincent control of the family, but does he really have a clear conscience when he knows too well the vengeance Vincent will plan?

That revenge plays out in the elaborate, gripping final sequence at the opera, a counterpart to one of the most famous episodes from The Godfather, when a baptism is intercut with a series of murders. That first sequence was about Michael's rise to power; now he suffers the consequences.

While the family watches Tony on stage, Coppola weaves in scenes of Vincent's crew settling scores. One shoots an enemy who plummets off a beautiful spiral staircase.

Another murders a rival by stabbing the man's own eyeglasses into his neck. Mary is the civilian who becomes the collateral damage of the Corleone family life.

She takes the bullet intended for her father, Don Michael Corleone. Sofia did the same for her father, becoming the scapegoat for a job she took to get his movie in on time. It is sad. It is hard to resist the pull of the music when considering how much of a worthy ending this cut is to The Godfather saga. Composer Nino Rota tells us when to celebrate and how to mourn. And his reunion with Kay evokes the post-war era they met in.

The music ties the film together so beautifully that this time around it feels like the skin of the original, rather than its clothes. By the end of the film, the emperor has no clothes. The church is no different. Legitimacy is an illusion. Paramount wanted to grow a franchise. Coppola had to be persuaded to make a sequel to the first film. Paramount wanted Coca-Cola instead of wine. Fredo is all over this film.

How he died is the first question Mary asks Vincent. Michael tells Cardinal Lamberto Raf Vallone a list of his sins would take up too much time. The first cut may have been the deepest, but the final cut in The Godfather, Coda is the most ironic.

Coppola adds the subtitle, in quotations, apart from the puppeteer logo of the films and book, and then takes exactly that promise away. All family debts have been settled, but he has no family left. He is wearing dark glasses, slumps in his chair, loses his grip on the orange in his lap, and falls dead to the ground.

The phrase actually translates to years. Imagine how many Godfather sequels could be made in that time.