You'd have to be crazy or very canny and confident to figure you could fill
the shoes of Marlon Brando. That's what De Niro was asked to do, in a sense, in
the incredible 1974 sequel to Francis Ford Coppola's mob
masterpiece. Cast as a young, intense ... more Vito Corleone, a man forced by
circumstances into a life of crime in the New World of the U.S., the young De
Niro created a whole new character, an alert, ever-haunted man whose biggest
priority is family, for better or worse. De Niro's Vito is incredibly alert,
figuring out just how the success game in the near-feudal neighborhoods of poor
Manhattan is rigged — and then figuring out a way to rig it in his favor, and
striking with unhesitating lethal force once he does. It is only at that point
that De Niro, who speaks in a Sicilian dialect throughout, dons the rasp of
Brando's Don Vito, putting it on almost like a protective cloak. It's a
magnificent piece of acting work and a measure of De Niro's incredible
commitment: When's the last time YOU learned a different language for what would
for all intents and purposes be a temp job?
