That always drove me nuts about "The Godfather". Why didn't they have, say, a hit man having dinner at the restaurant, and have him do the killing? Why the Don's son? He would never have been chosen to do it in real life. Picking him made no sense to me and took away alot of the believability of the movie. There were other ways to kill them at the restaurant. It wasn't the only thing that bothers me, but it is the biggest thing.
Thanks to that scene not a year goes by without me being in a restaurant and overhearing someone say "Try the veal, it's the best in the city."
The problem is how do they lure Sollozzo and McCluskey into the restaurant for the kill without Michael? Give them veal they can't refuse?
Arnie, you are playing the wrong notes. You have forgotten that the Godfather is a dramatic story. Forget what the goombahs in Brooklyn would have done. The point of the hit is twofold: To eliminate a significant threat to the Corleone family, and more important, to establish the intelligence, patinece, ambition, ruthlessness, and devotion of Michael Corleone. Do you remember the scene where Michael says that he will meet with Sollazo and kill him, and his family laughs at him? Then he lays out his plan in essential detail, and the camera slowly closes in on him? "We get our people on the payroll at the newspapers to play up the story of McClusky as a bad cop" etc.. And Tessio agrees with him. That was the critical transition point in the movie, from Don Corleone, to Michael. as the key character. Without the hit, the story could not have evolved. The details of the hit? Of course they are believable. It was a sit down. You are right, there are always other ways to do a hit, but this worked from a dramatic perspective. Real life, I have never done a hit, so beg my indulgence. But I have banged a lot of women. So that makes me a universal expert, like staying at Holiday Inn.
OK, OK. I see the points being made, and I agree that for the purposes of story movement it was the thing to do. It's just that the effort put out by Tessio and Clemenza to plant a gun in the bathroom could have been redirected into putting someone in the restaurant as a patron, and then doing the hit. Also, where was McCluskey's and Solatzo's security? They would have never been left alone like that, there would have been guys at least at the door and at the back. They got dropped off for dinner and the car left? Never happen. When Michael's gun went off, security for the cop and Solatzo would have been running in, guns out, and Michael would have been dead. The way the hit was played out in the movie coulda never happened that way, Michael woulda been killed by security for the cop and Solatzo.
Arne two phrases you must embrace to really enjoy movies: 1) suspension of belief 2) poetic license. But as for the "facts" surrounding the hit. Sollazo and Capt. McKlusky lost all their tails when they U-turned on the GW bridge. They took Michael to an undisclosed location. They beleived -wronlgy it turns out - that Michael and the Corleones did not know, and could not have known where they were going to dine that night. And who would have the balls to whack a NYPD captain? Which is the point, both for the security level and for the unvieling of the true Michael Corleone. It is dramatically tight and credible in my view. I think I have made an argument here you can't refuse. P.S. I saw The Godfather in it's initial release, when I was 11, 1972, and have seen a dozen times since. I never tire of it.
"Nice work, Lou" You know, I always wondered about that bridge because it looked like the 59th Street bridge, which would have taken them to Brooklyn. Alternatively, it could have been the Triborough Bridge. The bridge seemed to be too narrow to be the GWB, despite the New Jersey sign.
59th goes to Queens, and all bridges have median dividers. Coppola took license. I would like to see a Godfather chapter dealing strictly with the period in Don Corleone's life from his ascension to neighborhood chieftan to the 1940s. In other words, Where Part 2 in Don Corleone's life leaves off, and where Part 1 begins. Now that would be a movie to see.