That’s clearly not Morrie.
That’s not a beard, that’s a shadow and blood on Johnny’s chin.
I’ve never read the book, but in the script, the real world character Johnny is based on is found dead in the car with his own Cadillac-lovin’ wife. Which is what is shown in the movie and which makes perfect sense.
I always thought Jimmy did call off the hit, but Tommy being almost made, took it upon himself to whack Morrie and Jimmy just went along after, cause it was no big deal to him to whack a guy. What’s he gonna do? Chastise a future made man? He just went with it.
Louis and Joana Cafora. Cafora did buy that pink car and he was being flashy with it, plus he shared way too many details of his mob escapades with his wife. But their bodies have actually never been found.
Instead it was two other mobsters that were found shot side by side in a car( and not a pink Fleetwood ). In the movie they were the characters shown being found in the garbage truck. Similarly the guy on the meat hook was also a different mobster than the one in the film( who was also killed, just not hung on a meat hook and probably wasn’t killed over his part in the Lufthansa heist ).
Scorsese took the liberty of conflating them for dramatic effect. Which I think worked pretty brilliantly - it’s a great scene.
Is that you, Jimmy Two Times?
Does anyone else think that Morrie had a point? I don’t recall exactly what his role was in the robbery, but he must have had some stake in it. Jimmy did owe him some of the money. Jimmy talks about Morrie as if he’s doing something wrong by asking, but how long was he supposed to wait to get his cut?
Well, someone had a point and it went in through the back of Morrie’s head. I think that’s all a point counts for in a mob movie.
But he was busting balls left and right. That’s what did him in (even if he was probably going be disappeared by Jimmy eventually anyway). I mean, ask Billy Batts how well being a ball buster goes over.
I don’t think the mob would have lasted very long if they tried to kill their partners after every robbery. Nobody is ever going to work with Jimmy again after what happened to his partners on the Lufthansa job.
And yeah, Morrie was gonna get killed regardless. But if someone owes me money, I don’t think I’m busting his balls to ask when he’s going to pay me.
No, but then again, there weren’t many $6 million robberies going on.
All in the game, yo.
Neither did Morrie.
I’ve always been amazed at the number of people who go into The Life despite the high fatality ratio. I’ve seen those FBI mafia family organization charts where the dearly departed are marked with a black stripe in the corner. Egad.
These are people who clearly don’t see or care about the risks.
God, the gambling world was so much different before online betting and modern casinos. My grandpa who’s still alive at age 92, grew up in that world and was on friendly terms with mobsters in Brooklyn in the 50s and 60s. Backroom craps games, numbers, all that stuff…he once tried to explain the concept of a numbers racket to me, I still can’t really wrap my mind around it. All that effort and risk expended on the pursuit of something that’s SO easy to do online now. Are there still underground bookies and numbers games?
My interpretation was that Jimmy had relaxed and changed his mind during the night and decided against it, but then when Morrie started asking about the money he got angry and changed his mind back.
The thing is they were all killed for reasons other than simply Jimmy being greedy and paranoid. Though to be fair paranoia was a major factor, these were nonetheless unreliable criminals. Though some were straight up killed out of paranoia/being a pest, like Krugman, others dug their own grave so to speak. Some screwed up their job( Stacks ), a couple skimmed money from the heist to finance a drug deal, Cafora was dangerously indiscreet, one was a threat to turn State’s evidence for being up on a unrelated murder charge. etc.
Beyond that Jimmy didn’t kill nearly all of them. His right-hand man in the heist was his son Frank. Tommy was killed for unrelated business. Tommy’s buddy Angelo Sepe( Frank Carbone in the film )seems to have done the bulk of Jimmy’s assassinations and was killed years later for unrelated business. Sepe’s brother-in-law Tony Rodriguez survived. Danny Rizzo survived. Gaspare Valenti survived.
So Burke eliminated screw-ups, thieves and suspected threats, but it wasn’t quite as thorough a house-cleaning as the film suggests.
He did have a point. But the central theme of the movie was that criminals are criminals. They may pretend that they have a code and follow certain rules but it’s ultimately bullshit. Criminals break their own rules the same way they break any other law; when they think it’s to their advantage and when they think they can get away with it.
Morrie the others had worked with Jimmy. They had done their part of the job and earned their money. But Jimmy decided he’d be better off killing them than paying them their share. That’s how criminals behave.
It’s the same thing with loyalty among criminals; it doesn’t really exist. The reality is criminals betray each other all the time. The only question is who will betray who first.
That’s why Jimmy had to come up with excuses. He wanted to be able to tell people that he had killed the others for justified reasons and not out of greed. And future partners would believe it because they wanted to believe it.
Tommy was mainly whacked because he killed Billy Batts, a made man, without permission. and as Henry said he was killed “for a lot of other things”
Not in the movie, but Paulie told the Gambinos about Tommy’s murder of Batts because he was upset that Tommy tried to rape Karen Hill while Henry was in prison.
(Reading this thread and singing “Rags to Riches” in my head)
Another thing not in the movie was the other reason why Billy Batts was killed. In real life, Jimmy and Tommy had been given Billy Batts’ loan shark operation to manage while he was in prison. When Billy Batts was released, he wanted Jimmy and Tommy to step aside so he could take the business back. So Jimmy and Tommy had already decided they were going to kill Billy Bats that night; the argument that occurred was just an excuse.
As far as the numbers game goes, it has better odds than state lotteries. And then there’s the tax issue on winnings.
Gamblers are also not so bright. They might make a bet with a bookie despite not having the dough to pay up if they lose. The bookie has enforcement system to get paid back with a high rate of return. More legitimate venues expect payment up front.