Opinion

An offer you can refuse

The Family Corleone

by Ed Falco, based on a screenplay

by Mario Puzo

Grand Central Publishing

He barely appears in the movie, yet Luca Brasi steals “The Godfather.” Maybe because he’s the subject of two of the film’s most immortal lines — Luca helps administer “the offer he can’t refuse,” and after he’s garrotted, he “sleeps with the fishes.” He doesn’t kill anyone in the movie, yet he’s still the scariest capo.

No surprise, then, that Mario Puzo thought fans would welcome a return of Don Corleone’s personal diàvolo. In early drafts of the script to “The Godfather Part III,” Puzo structured it like the previous sequel, weaving in flashbacks of Corleone’s rise to power in the 1930s, including how he recruited Brasi. After Puzo’s death in 1999, his agent found this lost screenplay and gave it to novelist Ed Falco.

The Corleones, with their constant whining about “going legit” between beating guys with tire irons, remain irresistible. It’s 1933-34, the end of Prohibition, and Vito is still trying to consolidate his power. There are vendettas, street shootings and so many descriptions of Italian food that the book includes a glossary.

But, like many prequels, “The Family Corleone” suffers from a fill-in-the-blank quality, fleshing out things that didn’t need to be explained — like Sonny’s temper or exactly how Tom Hagen was brought into the family.

The worst, disappointingly, is Luca. We watch as Brasi’s brutality leads him to despair, and how he becomes indebted to Vito. But his childhood traumas don’t make him any deeper of a character. The diàvolo isn’t in the details. The more you find out about Luca, the less scary he becomes — and no “Godfather” fan wants that.

The ‘Godfather’ century

1901 Young Vito Andolini’s father, mother and brother are murdered by a local mob boss in Corleone, Sicily. Vito escapes to America, where immigration officials name him after his hometown (“The Godfather Part II”).

1920 Vito kills local mob boss Fanucci, who’s been squeezing merchants for protection money, and becomes the new power in the neighborhood. (“The Godfather Part II”).

1925 Vito returns to Sicily and kills Don Ciccio, the man who murdered his family.

1933-34 Time frame of new novel, “The Family Corleone,” based on a Mario Puzo screenplay. Vito vies for power with other families and gangs, including that of enforcer Luca Brasi. His son Sonny is starting to get into the family business, while the boy he raised, Tom Hagen, studies to be a lawyer at NYU.

1941 Vito’s son Michael enlists in the Marines after the Pearl Harbor attack.

1945 Vito is gravely wounded in an assassination attempt (“The Godfather”) which will eventually pit the Corleones against the Tattaglia and Barzini families.

1946 Michael avenges his father’s shooting (“The Godfather”) and must flee to Sicily, where he gets married. Poor Apollonia is blown up by Corleone enemies (“The Godfather Part II”).

1946-48Acting boss Sonny Corleone sends brother Fredo to Vegas to learn the casino business (the novel “The Godfather’s Returns” expands on this period). Back in New York, Sonny is killed on the tollway (“The Godfather”).

1949Michael is allowed to return to America. He marries his girlfriend Kay (“The Godfather”).

1955Vito dies of a heart attack at age 63 (“The Godfather”).

1958-59Michael moves the family business to Las Vegas, after fending off threats from other families and Senate sub-committees. Brother Fredo betrays Michael to gangster Hyman Roth, but is discovered. Michael has Fredo killed (“The Godfather Part II”).

1963 Time frame of the novel “The Godfather’s Revenge.” Tom Hagen is killed by a former member of the Corleone family who has been betrayed.

1979 Events of “The Godfather Part III.” Michael is divorced, wracked with guilt over killing his brother and still chasing that dream of going legitimate. A deal involving the Vatican goes bad, however, leaving his daughter dead and him broken.

1997Like his father, Michael dies, ironically, not of murder but old age (“The Godfather Part III”).