The Offer episode 9 review: The Godfather faces new problems as it gets ready for screening

3/5

Story: A selected crew and Al Pacino are in Sicily to film the remaining parts of The Godfather as Robert Evans goes AWOL. Paramount wants to take creative decisions about the film and the crew have to fight them. 

Review: The ninth episode of The Offer takes us to Sicily along with a small crew of The Godfather along with Al Pacino. They are there to shoot the part from the movie that takes place in Corleone, but eventually ends up filming it in another town. While the episode says that this decision was made because Al Ruddy sensed that he would have to deal with the mafia there, but Mark Seal in his book Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather had pointed out that the decision to move to another town was because Corleone looked too busy. 

For the fans of the original film, there are interesting points to keep them occupied in the latest episode, such as the cafe where Michael meets Apollonia’s father or a scene where Betty (Juno Temple) is casting for the roles to be shot, and meets Simonetta Stefanelli who plays Apollonia in The Godfather. 

We also get a small sequence where Coppola tries to learn about a drink he is having in Italy. Coppola, who owns a vineyard in real life, has had a passion for wines, and this is also something that has been subtly mentioned and involved in previous episodes as well. 

The team wraps up filming and goes back to the US, where another problem awaits them. Robert Evans has gone AWOL after feeling depressed and out of shape after learning that Ali MacGraw has left him for Steve McQueen. In real life, Evans was suffering from drug addiction and back pains, but it is not sure if he ever stopped working. However in The Offer, this allows Barry Lapidus (Colin Hanks) take over Paramount, who ends up taking decisions that would have turned the movie’s fate upside down. 

Lapidus is not based on a real character, but we could make sense of the decisions he makes in the show as some decisions that the studio and Gulf and Western wanted to make in real life. For starters, he has no film knowledge, but only business ideas. He asks Francis Ford Coppola to trim 30 minutes from the movie and wants it to be two hours long, to the anger and frustration of the filmmaker. He also opposes the creative team with regards to the poster for the film. While Coppola and Ruddy want it to be the same as the book (which is one of the iconic posters of The Godfather in real life), Lapidus wants something much different. 

However, after a visit from Ruddy, Evans returns to Paramount, to the relief of Coppola and the team. We learn that Evans received a cut of the movie, and this could be one of the reasons for his return. While we are still uncertain as to how much of all this is fact, there is no denying that The Godfather possesses some power that goes far beyond cinema. 

While we still don’t know how much of the story of The Offer to believe, even though Al Ruddy himself has helped in writing the show, the episode ends with a factual event. Caesar (Jake Cannavale), a close associate of the comatosed Joe Colombo wants to know when the movie’s preemie is, as Ruddy had half-heartedly agreed that the mob could make it to the screening. 

While it is clear that Paramount or Gulf and Western for that matter would do anything to avoid this happening, Ruddy makes Bettye smuggle a rush of The Godfather out of Paramount and flies with it to New York. He sets up a special screening for members of the mob, technically making them the first ever people to watch the cinematic masterpiece. This actually happened in real life, and the members of the audience are said to have loved the movie and moved by it.  

With one episode remaining, we could expect to see events that took place during the movie’s “premiere” and other aspects that followed the release of one of the greatest movies of all time. 

Verdict: The ninth episode is breezy, despite being over an hour long. There are a few aspects that would appeal to the fans of The Godfather, including a scene showing the first reactions of the movie after it was played in a theater screen. The episode serves as a decent penultimate episode to the series.