As Sonny points out, a hit isn’t like killing someone from a mile away in the war. Although Michael was pretty cool in the hospital scene, I think he wasn’t quite ready to shoot two guys right in the face.
Especially two unarmed men in the face (one of whom is a police captain). The scene shows Michael being pulled into the life his father never wanted for him.
In High school film class, they made a bid deal about the sound of the subway train, screeching in the background during a tight closeup on Pacino’s face. Michael’s heart is probably racing, his brain is screaming at him “I don’t know what to do, here.” Michael’s going to use “muscle memory” – combing his stoic response to Sonny when he announces he’ll kill them, his military training (yes, sure, its nothing like he experienced, yeah right, tell that to someone you know who faced wartime combat,) and his on-screen practice with Clemenza. There is some imperfection in this hit, and some strength in Michael’s conviction. Its a complex scene. Lemme see you kill a drug dealer and a cop smoothly, according to plan, by the numbers, no flaws.*
Please don’t actually do this.*
**Please don’t say I actually told you to do this.
I’m unemployed.
I once read (or saw; I don’t remember) an interview in which a mob hitman was quoted as saying that just before you whack somebody, you get a rushing sound in your ears, and the noise from the train in the movie captured that perfectly!
Clemenza’s marching orders to Michael are pretty specific
[ul]
[li]Ask to go to the bathroom[/li][li]Come out of the bathroom shooting[/li][li]Shoot both men twice in the head[/li][li]Drop your hand and let the gun drop immediately[/li][li]Don’t run and don’t make eye contact[/li][/ul]
These are reinforced before the scene. Sonny asks Michael if Clemenza told him to drop the gun and Michael says, “a million times”. A first time audience does not know if he will be successful and notices each time he deviates from the script.
Micheal handles it all and his errors are ultimately not enough to cause failure and the music swells up into the big Daaaaa-Da-Daa-Da-Daaaaaaa that signifies success but killing two unarmed men and joining his family in the business he wanted to avoid is clearly more of a challenge than thwarting his father’s assassination at the hospital.
By the way, I got most of this from this analysis.
They’d have been better off if they’d done like Lucky Luciano did in the assassination of Giuseppe Masseria. In that instance, Lucky went to the bathroom, and his hit team came in and did the deed. Mike could have “made his bones” in some other, more discreet way later.
But Michael is IDed as the shooter. Vito takes notes of the allegations (unfounded, of course ;)) against Michael during the meeting of the dons. Michael has to spend two years in Sicily while things get cleaned up. If he had done a smoother job, he might have spent less time in Sicily. Maybe coming back with Apollonia in one piece.
In the book more detail is given about how the Corleones got a person on death row to confess to the killings in exchange for money for his relatives. Time and money that might not have been necessary if Michael had followed Clemenza’s orders.
I don’t see any significant hesitation or stumbling in the aftermath.
Take a look at where Michael’s head is by this point in the movie. He has already pledged his loyalty to his father. He has said he is convinced that Sollozzo will try again to kill the Don so the negotiation Sollozzo wants is just a ruse. Michael has personally devised the plan that will deviously exploit his own civilian status in order to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey. He has forsaken what had been, until now, his life’s work- staying out of the family business. It is a very clear track he has placed himself on.
Michael just killed the men who almost killed his father. He is convinced they will try again. Killing them means saving his father’s life, that was the entire point of it, so I fail to see how Michael could possibly feel any disgust in what he just did.
Yes, those are the only people he personally murders.
That always bothered me. Michael was a Marine who fought in the Pacific and earned a Navy Cross. A war hero in a war known for being up close and nasty. Chances are Micheal saw a lot of up close action and not a lot of shooting from a mike away.
But you see that’s an example of Sonny underestimating Michael. Sonny does it, Sollozzo and McCluskey do it, Tessio and Barzini and the heads of the other families do it. Michael is colder and more capable than anyone suspects, that’s one of the twists.
He very clearly deviated from Clemenza’s instructions. Both before and after the shooting. There was an artistic choice to show this.
Not until he pulled that trigger
I think Pacino portrays a very conflicted Michael in the run-up and immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Sure, once it is done, we have the descent fully into ice-cold, lizard-eyed Michael.
I agree. If Michael could see any other way to keep his father and his family safe, he never would have gotten involved the way he did. Once he started, he soon became exactly what he wanted to avoid.
Marsellus Wallace’s soul.
Not following Clemenza’s instructions doesn’t automatically equal hesitation or stumbling. IIRC, the book explains Michael not following exact orders because his instincts tell him to act otherwise, which would be difficult to portray on film. But even as portrayed in the film, none of them are hesitations. Watch the artistic choice to show him calmly patting down his hair right before he is about to murder two people. He is at peace with what he has to do. There is no hesitation there.
Then that means the twistedly touching scene of Michael telling the Don “I’ll take care of you now. I’m with you now. I’m with you,” is pointless. It’s not, of course, because that scene with the Don is the moment Michael becomes the bad guy, commits in his heart to be a gangster, not when he pulls the trigger.
The run up entails Michael pledging to always be with his gangster father, realizing that in a tough situation he has ice in his veins, insulting a cop who could have killed him and then planning a murder that is so brazen that he has to convince other hardened gangsters to go along with it. What part of that is conflicted, let along very? What part of the immediate aftermath shows Michael as very conflicted? Surely there is more to it than how he flips his hand in the air after he drops the gun?
True- fighting at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal was vicious, brutal, up close, and hand to hand.
Fair enough. I didn’t recall that from the movie. Based on Sonny’s conment, I figured he was in artillery or something. Which is not to say artillery is a cake walk, but I could see Sonny drawing a distinction between that and blasting a guy in the face. But, yeah, if he was a decorated Marine who served in the Pacific, he was probably no stranger to close quarters combat.
I still see Michael as unnerved by the hit, based on how he goes off script and tosses the gun instead of dropping it calmly as Clemenza instructed. I’m not sure how to square that with his war experience. Maybe shooting two guys who weren’t shooting back was unsettling. Or maybe he was scared by the realization that he was now, no question, a mobster, a role he had wanted to avoid.
It’s been too long. I should watch the movie again.
Watching the scene again, I’m starting to get more convinced that he wasn’t reluctant to kill the guys as much as he was to go into the mob life. He starts off the movie telling Kay “That’s my family, not me.” No going back after he kills them.
Also, look close and you can see a little red spot on McCluskey’s forehead before Michael shoots him.
Virtually every combat vet I’ve ever met came home utterly sick of killing and wanted to have nothing to do with it ever again. Michael may have been proud to have served, but he probably wished to put it all behind him. He was certainly subdued prior to the hit.
All of Michael’s words are just that…until he pulls the trigger.
I don’t think he has any problems with the actual killing, but everything in the run-up shows him struggling with the enormity of what he has to do, and afterwards, what he has done.
Look at how he handles the gun after retrieving it…tentative. You think smoothing his hair down is in some way a sign he is at peace. I don’t get that at all. Immediately before that he places his hand on his forehead in a “calm yourself and think” gesture.
The hair smoothing is done at the same that a subway train is roaring by and it seems a gesture to quieten the roaring in his head. When he walks out he hesitates at the bathroom door for slightly too long, he walks back and sits down and his eyes are all over the place, he’s not listening to anything other than the thoughts in his head and building himself up to what he has to do.
After the final shoot he stands, looking around for five or six seconds, then hurries out, discarding the gun.
If Coppola and Pacino wanted to show a calm, cold killer, totally at ease with what he had to do then they failed. They made very deliberate choices in that scene and none of them paint Michael as the fully-formed snake he is to become.
You mention Michael pledging his loyalty to his dad, that’s true, what’s also true is that he knows his dad very specifically does not want him involved in that side of the business. No point in making that statement if you aren’t going to use it later in the film. One huge source of Michael’s conflict is that, in protecting his father and family he knows he will break his fathers heart.