The reason that that's almost all the plot you're going to get is not because this grey eminence of modern crime films is light on plot or even that spoilable but that the events peppering the timeline are far less important than the sense that if one turn of the wheel doesn't break it the wheel will turn the stronger into a chaotic and uncertain future. This is a tale of organised crime and the families that run it. More so, it's about the families themselves.
While there are many threads to follow in this epic the most compelling is that of Mike played by Al Pacino. His trek goes from family trophy with medals to be protected from "our thing" to having to act decisively at breaking points. These are some of the tensest and most compelling scenes and Coppola's conducting of his forces is not just masterful it goes right up to that final episode of The Sopranos which quotes it by the subtlest means. And as this is an epic in which Coppola is setting about inventing the mafia movie for the American audience his liberal debts to Italian post war crime thrillers and epics are paid in full. The sprawling opening setpiece, the assassination in the street, the narrative of the lawyer and the west coast producer and its effects, even the phrase "offer he can't refuse" are cinematic canon and are seen clearly in all this film's descendants.
So, is it any good? Well, first you have to remember that stuff about its long trailing influence. Is it good or bad that a big mafia celebration in The Sopranos looks pretty much like it does here? If Scorsese upped the ante on violence and then was outdone by Tarrantino and then was mainstreamed by The Sopranos the depiction of the banality of violence still stems from The Godfather. There is great care taken to provide depth so that these acts aren't simply vengeance spinning out of control and all that have followed ... have followed. "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." That's The Godfather. Even the opening petition scenes in which acts of extreme violence are discussed in casual code and presided over by a man who sounds like grandad as well as the coldest blooded Satan is a template. Mob bosses haven't just lashed out and fired away from this point, they always have to deliver the sermon, the joke, the shaggy dog explanation.
Is it good or bad? On the one hand nothing changes over decades, on the other the immediate depth of this example frees all its imitators to improvise and seek even further depth. Ever more imagination must be called upon to establish the mundanity of a contract hit. Well, it's not all Scorsese, there are mediocre to utterly cruddy gangster movies as well, it's just that those we recall and celebrate are those that inject the difficulty of the premise: family values and violence and extortion to uphold the family values. Hell, Mick Jagger sang about it: "Oh, the gangster looks so frightening with his Luger in his hand but when he gets home to his children he's a family man". If the Italian mob sagas admitted the issues Coppola put them centre screen. Michael's early actions are practical and intelligent but there's clearly a buzz in them that takes him to the next one, wiser and stronger and the more embroiled he gets, the closer to the centre, the more complete he is as a human. We don't like admitting that even as we hope he gets through but there's no escaping that we are witnessing the birth of a monster.
It's this mix of virtuoso cinema and ethical difficulty that thrilled audiences even as it sobered them. Painterly power and machine guns that look like pain (not just power). He imported a European aesthetic into an already established American film genre and made an epic art film that could be watched with a barrel of popcorn. Also, think of Brando's iconic performance: he was coasting at this time but after this he was about to have a great '70s. Al Pacino went from young and promising to the A-list. Ditto Diane Keaton. Robert Duvall entered the realm of dependable character actors which led to the apotheosis of his art in the same director's Apocalypse Now (see also Brando again). And Coppola himself went from a jobbing Corman apprentice to a capable feature director with a few artsy tools in the workshop to mainstream auteur number one. It was this success in profit and acclaim that put him at the top but also allowed the other movie brats, the Lucases, the Spielbergs, the Scorseses, through the gate to overhaul the old system and accelerate the change. I know, Easy Rider, but that just made the money men think it would all be low budget big returns, Coppola added budget and brains and warmth and so the '70s was born.
So, yeah, it's good.
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