For years, I skipped The Godfather III. I loved the first one, loved the second, but I heard few good things about the third, and far more important, I didn’t see the point in it, so I blew it off. To me, and to most people frankly, the story of the rise and fall of the Corleone Family was told with brutal efficiency in the first two films. The final shot of Michael sitting empty and alone on the lawn of his Tahoe estate is devastating, the perfect conclusion. Why bother with a third chapter?

Suffice it to say, writer/director Francis Ford Coppola had his reasons. I’ll leave it there. Somewhere along the way, I picked up this lovely blu-ray edition of all three films, which is well worth the money if you can find it. The restoration, supervised by Coppola, is beyond reproach. Parts one and two have never looked so good. Having dropped the cash on whole thing, I figured it was time I gave Part III a shot. Armed with a pizza and a pack of smokes, I sat down for one last ride with the Corleones.

And it was kind of a drag.

I watched it once and thought, “That was okay…right?”

Then I watched it again and thought, “Nope, not okay.”

The original cut of Part III is an occasionally admirable mess. The only good thing I can say about it is that it is completely unaware of its own messiness. Like the first two films, it knows how to take its time. It almost seems to relish its flaws, giving them time stretch their legs, and then coming back ten minutes later as if to say, “You thought that was bad? Check this out!”

I’ll give you an example. About an hour in, Michael has a diabetic stroke and winds up in the hospital. It’s a good beat, with a marvelous turn from Pacino, but it’s watered down with bad, expository dialogue.

“It’s his diabetes!”, shouts his sister Connie.

“Has he taken his medicine?!?”, replies Al Neri.

No, you fool! Quickly, to the hospital!

It doesn’t go quite that far, but you get the idea. What’s maddening is that it’s an unforced error, one that would have been easy to fix with a quick bit of action or dialogue during the opening party sequence. Michael could have some asked someone for a candy bar or someone could have walked in on him getting an insulin shot. This is The Godfather for heaven’s sake, oranges are everywhere. Would it have been so hard to slip one in? This kind of mistake runs rampant throughout the film. They’re not dealbreakers, but the truth is that Godfather III doesn’t have any dealbreakers. It’s death by a thousand cuts, a mass of choices (casting Sofia, not paying Duvall to come hang out, bad ADR work and so on) that pile up and undermine the finished product.

These are not the kind of problems that are easily fixed by a director’s cut. After years of hearing criticism, Coppola decided to release a fresh edit of The Godfather III, newly retitled as The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, complete with a new beginning and a new ending. My last viewing of III was nearly ten years ago, so when I heard that Coda had been released, I decided to give it a spin.

That said, as a rule, I’m not a fan of director’s cuts. They rarely add much in the way of substance, nor are they capable of fixing already bad films. There are exceptions. The extended editions of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy outstrip the theatrical releases in just about every way. I like the additions that Ridley Scott and James Cameron made to their respective Alien films. Speaking of Scott, Blade Runner pretty much launched all of this director’s cut nonsense in the first place, and all of the subsequent iterations are better than the original.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Coda does not find its way into such company. That’s not to say that there aren’t some interesting choices, or that it’s not worth a look from the cinephile crowd. I liked the new opening, mainly because the entire sequence at the church never made much sense to me. I do think that reorganizing some of the story beats made it a little easier to follow. I’m still not sure that I could explain the entire thing to you without a map, but that was true of Godfather II as well, at least on first viewing.

The catch is that I wanted to watch Godfather II again and again and again. It’s mesmerizing, brilliant on every possible level. I never felt that way about III and, having seen Coda, I still don’t feel that way. The story is less muddy, but still muddy. While the extra cuts may clear up a few story beats, they come in weird, unsettling places, too often making you feel as though you’ve walked into a room just as the important parts of a conversation are going down. You might be getting good information, but you’ve missed the chance to hang out, which brings me to the part about Sofia.

Famously, Coppola was hit with a bit of buzzard luck when it came to casting the role of Mary Corleone, daughter to Michael and cousin to Andy Garcia’s Vincent. According to rumor, Julia Roberts backed out because of her commitment to Flatliners (Schumacher, natch) and Winona Ryder bailed, citing understandable exhaustion after appearing in literally every single film made between 1988 and 1990. When no one else panned out, Coppola turned to his daughter Sofia.

Let’s get right to the guts of it. Is Sofia Coppola well cast in this role? Yes, she is. Her aunt in real life, Talia Shire, plays her aunt in the film, so she looks like she could be part of the Corleone family. She’s gorgeous, she clearly knows the film business and she’s incredibly intelligent. Is she a great actor? No. Does it ruin an otherwise brilliant film? No, unequivocally, no, not even a little bit. The failing of this film is on Francis Coppola, and him alone. I’ll grant you that Sofia’s performance is stiff, and it doesn’t help, but it’s just one of a thousand miscues that bring down the finished product, both Coda and the original cut. Take any one of them out and you still have the other nine-hundred and ninety-nine running around causing trouble.

In Coda, Coppola doesn’t remove Mary, but he does cut down her screen time, which doesn’t change the base fact that her story never really comes together. Her relationship with her father is idealized. Her relationship with her mother is glossed over. She feels much too passive, except when it comes to her pursuit of Vincent, which I have to say is just icky. They’re first cousins, in no way removed. It’s gross. Did no one mention this at any point during production?

Okay, bottom line, The Godfather III is just as bad as I remembered. Is it worth revisiting or seeing for the first time, either through The Godfather Coda or in its original form? No, not for my money. This is a film that doesn’t work and wasn’t necessary in the first place. No amount of revisionism will change that.