I was under the impression (#2) meant that you may hide but we can reach your family anywhere, anytime. And you know my family has done it before.
#2 to me was always a threat to his family.
What seals is that later, Frankie is talking to Tom and Tom explains how a Roman Senator will kill himself, and Frankie asks if that senator’s family will be OK after that. This makes a deal that if Frankie kills himself, and thus removes any threat to the Corleons that they won’t come back after Frankie’s family.
I think given the overall events of the movie, namely that Michael
has his own brother killed for his betrayal
there is certainly room for the answer to the question of what Frankie’s brother was doing at the hearing to be “a little of both.” A way not only for Michael to say, “See your brother? He’s not a rat. Why can’t you live up to his example?” also, “If you stay on this course, think of what you could lose.”
Looked at it tonight, he doesn’t say “OK”, he says “taken care of”. IMHO, that’s a very different thing. He’s basically asking if his family will be looked after financially, not worried about them getting whacked. IIRC, the Mafia, at that time, had a big thing about not involving ‘civilians’.
Exactly. He makes a deal to take care of his family. They will be looked after when he was gone. They are under no threat.
Frankies brother was not a hostage. If he were they would not have brought him into the Senate. He looked pissed. He is not a naive victim. As Frankie says, he is a tough bastard, tougher than him, who would have been running a family in America except he didn’t want to leave his one mule town in Sicily. He was there to tell Frankie to shut up. There was no threat to his safety.