Intent and effect are often at odds. Much of the audience for a popular film are naturally going to glom on to the superficial presentation and ignore the subtext. That’s just the way it works.
You’re right, Fredo had to be killed, Michael couldn’t trust him anymore. But that doesn’t mean that Michael wasn’t tormented about it.
At first he gets sucked in trying to protect his father. The scene where he foils an assassination attempt at the hospital establishes that. After that, he is trapped by his ties to his family and his actions. The war isn’t going to simply peter out by itself, and until it’s ended Michael and everyone he cares about is in direct danger.
I think it shows the way evil actions can be rationalised away in the name of honour and loyalty. Euphemisms such as “doing business” are telling. Remember the treatment of the film producer, Woltz, and the prostitute that is murdered to blackmail the senator, those are truly evil acts. It’s not necessarily a realistic depiction of the mafia, and does glamorise them somewhat, but do you think evil people can’t be charismatic?
Wow, that’s a massive amount of buying in. Criminals don’t have to do any of the bad stuff they do. They choose to rob, steal, and kill because they want the money. That’s not a moral choice that most people make. And, perhaps, even if you do make that choice, you can still have some human feeling about the bad things you’ve done, especially if they include murdering your own brother.
I get it. But if my brother tries to have me killed, and I am a “Professional Killer,” well I’m pretty sure I’m gonna kill my brother.
Of course I bought in, during GF I and GF II, which are great movies.
I think it’s a silly concept that this cold blooded killer is suddenly all tormented about one more murder–Yes, it was his brother, but it was a brother who BETRAYED him and set Michael up to be killed.
The “human felling about the bad things [he’s] done” makes a lot of sense–but the entire story centered on that ONE BAD thing (i.e., killing Fredo). The whole time I watched saying, “who gives a shit about Fredo, he had to be killed.” And of course he didn’t “HAVE TO” in the sense that we have to breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2, as you seem to be defining “HAVE TO.” But in the “MOB BUSINESS,” you have to kill or be killed. Do you not “buy in” to that concept at all?
This is silly. Regardless of how you justify doing something, it’s never puzzling that a man is going to be tormented by, or at the very least, feel regret and shame for killing his own brother, man he grew up with and a man he loved.
It doesn’t matter what the cold calculus of “it’s only business, and business required this” tells you. If you are a fully functioning human being, it’s completely realistic that something like this is going to haunt you for the rest of your life, and, perhaps, poison any success you might have in the future.
The whole point is that Michael is not a cold-blooded killer like Luca Brasi, who can kill a baby and feel nothing. And I can bet you that many of the people who sign up for the MOB BUSINESS and DO WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO TO SURVIVE are unable to shake such demons even if they had to because they were BETRAYED. That’s part of what makes us human. The one who can are the ones who are complete sociopaths.
Why do you think so many of our soldiers are coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq with several mental and emotional disorders when all they were doing was what they had signed up for in the WAR BUSINESS and slaughter and death is what you are required to to.
The point is that if you are still a functioning human being, that shit is going to fuck you up.