A lot of this could be put on Al Pacino, who, in the first film at least, feels very lifeless and wooden at times. Sometimes he's great, sometimes he's just not that good at all, so this really doesn't help towards his characters development in the slightest. Not once in the three hour runtime, do we see Michael really struggle between his conscience with the fact he wants to avoid the criminal lifestyle his family has and then avenging the wrongdoings brought upon his family. This is where that sympathy I had in his first few moments escapes. I understand to an extent as to why he decided to kill the man who attempted to kill his father Vito (played excellently by Marlon Brando by the way) but he seem sueded into it too easily despite his morals. Then, when he is hiding out in Sicily, he marries a woman who is killed in a car bomb that is meant for him, to which he returns to America to exact his revenge. What puzzles me here is the fact that, we hardly get to spend anytime with Michael and his wife, who we know nothing about at all. What happened to his girlfriend Kay? Did he not love her or does he not miss her? Or has that just been disregarded? Anyway, back to the car bomb, if Coppola had just given us a scene where we get to see his guilt-stricken rage of what had happened to his wife when she died, we may find things more believable and we would be able to see the decay of these ideals that made him a good man in the first place. It would have been a lot more impactful. Then the next time we see Michael he's back in New York and asks Kay to marry him just like that? As if what happened with his wife had just been a breeze? It's all over the place and I struggle to get what was going on here with this character, as it's never mentioned again. There are times in the film that we just don't care about these characters because we are not given the actual time we would like to spend with them, to understand who they are and what motivates them, because all throughout the film event after event after event happens and there is so much going on that not just Michael but many of the other characters are underdeveloped and things just happen because that's how they were written in the script.

And I know that this may seem like a nitpick, but yes this film is way too long. In it's round about three hour runtime we get to see these events, some that just don't satisfy or seem like filler, when we could have had these scenes that would have enhanced the Michael characterisation significantly. So really, it's just about characters. I know that if I had seen this when it first came out, I'd have liked it better, but I know that no film is perfect, and things have to be picked apart in order to be a critic. I definitely prefer this one to its sequel, more for the fact I still didn't believe Michael or Pacino's portrayal of him. Maybe I'm being a bit too hard on it. It is a good film, it is excellently made and shot but what faults it is the characterisation and story. I see that this is of course based off of a novel, which I haven't read - but would expect to give us a lot more development which we didn't get in the film. So I suppose that sums it up. It's a good movie, but for me, it's not outstanding. Goodfellas on the other hand, now that's where it's at!