In August 1972, an amateur robbery of a Brooklyn bank branch turns into a fourteen-hour hostage standoff broadcast live to a crowd outside. Sidney Lumet's film, built from Frank Pierson's Oscar-winning script and Al Pacino's live-wire performance as Sonny Wortzik, treats the robbery as already lost from its first minute, following what happens to a small, desperate plan once it becomes public spectacle.
Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 sequel cuts between young Vito Corleone's immigrant rise in early-twentieth-century New York, played by Robert De Niro, and Michael Corleone's ruthless consolidation of the family's power a generation later, played again by Al Pacino. Gordon Willis returns as cinematographer and Nino Rota as composer, on a budget of $13 million against a $48 million take, and the film won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, an unusual feat for a sequel.