The Godfather Part II

For the second installment in his epically scaled adaptation of Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola picked up where the first film left off, with Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) having assumed power over his family’s criminal syndicate and relocated the clan to a sprawling, fortress-like Nevada compound. The sequel’s contrapuntal narrative timeline alternates between flashbacks to the early life of Michael’s father, Vito (portrayed here by an Oscar-winning Robert De Niro) and the young don’s postwar attempts to “legitimize” the Corleone enterprise, establish a foothold in the lucrative Las Vegas casino business, and navigate heightened regulatory attention from the federal government. Reprising her role from Part I, Diane Keaton embodies Kay Corleone’s mounting horror at her husband’s activities with understated force, accentuating the tragic stakes of an elemental confrontation between patriarchal legacies of violence and a mother’s fierce drive to protect her children.