Tripwire Reviews The Godfather Trilogy Available Now On 4K UHD And Digital

Making Us An Offer We Mostly Can’t Refuse

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows casts his eye over the 4K restoration of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Trilogy, released to commemorate the first film’s 50th anniversary…

The Godfather
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, John Cazale, Robert Duvall
The Godfather Part II
Starring: Al Pacino, James Caan, John Cazale, Robert Duvall, Robert DeNiro

The Godfather Coda: The Death Of Michael Corleone 

Starring: Al Pacino, Sofia Coppola, George Hamilton, Andy Garcia

Paramount 

Fifty years ago this year, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was released in cinemas and it changed its language forever. So we have the original seminal film from 1972, the incredible follow-up from two years later and the third instalment which followed in 1990 all restored for 4K UHD release. 

Starting with The Godfather, visually the film does look staggering in its restored form. Scenes like the wedding that opens the movie, the infamous scene with the horse’s head in Hollywood and the death of Sonny all pop off the screen. A lot of time, care and attention has been taken here to bring The Godfather up to the level of sophistication it needs to be to make it the visual equal of everything’s top-notch home cinema systems.

With Part II, one of the most elegantly cinematic films of the past fifty years, again the restorers have lifted its most iconic scenes like the execution of Don Fanucci by a young hungry Vito Corleone, Don Corleone returning to Sicily to wreak his revenge on Don Ciccio who killed his mother and even the sequences in Cuba when Michael releases that it is his brother Fredo (Cazale) who has betrayed him all look staggering on a 55 inch smart TV in your lounge. The first film is still amazing but its follow-up has an ambition and a cinematic power and simplicity that means that it continues to deserve its place in the pantheon of unforgettable modern movie classics. Cazale’s cinema career was cut short but he was never better than he was here, electric on screen against his dominant younger brother (Pacino).  

The Godfather Coda: The Death Of Michael Corleone was Coppola’s attempt to remake the third instalment of the trilogy into something more palatable and despite tweaking it, it is still by a country mile the weakest of the three. The absence of James Caan as Tom Hagen, Pacino’s rather weak story arc and the presence of Vincent Mancini played by Andy Garcia as Sonny’s bastard son in a story which offers nothing new to the overriding familial tale make this film feel poorly conceived and lacking the heft of its two predecessors. Sofia Coppola as Michael’s ill-fated daughter Mary just doesn’t have the acting chops to carry off the part really and Eli Wallach as Don Altabello is so horribly miscast. Also this is a modern film so unlike the first two, it was shot using contemporary techniques so it really doesn’t look any different to its release last year or any of its other home cinema versions.

The short video introduction to The Godfather from Coppola himself does give us a little bit of insight into their approach to restoring the first film. This boxed set is for completists but also for fans of the first two films who would like to see these two bona fide cinematic classics in a format worthy of current home cinema systems. The third film still feels like an afterthought to its far superior progenitors no matter how many times it is retitled and represented.

The Godfather Trilogy available on 4K UHD and Digital now 

Here’s the film’s trailer