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UdoConstantini (117)
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How did Scudder know?
The Plot Holes are Ludicrous
Jonah Hauer-King is simply a dreadful actor
Didn't Martin get off too light?
Let's play "Fv<k, Marry, Kill" with Juliana Crane
Mother's Reaction
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I thought this film might be kinda lame, but it was beyond awful, in fact it was downright putrid. Brady can't act worth a damn.
As I recall, the Chinese were assisting North Korea (including with providing troops) without making a formal declaration of war, but if the US had made an incursion into Chinese territory, we fired the PRC would have entered the war unconditionally. IMHO Truman was absolutely correct and justified in firing MacArthur, who was aptly given the moniker "The American Caesar".
The scene that I thought really stood out, as far as great acting, was the one where they show Jesse look at himself in the mirror and hurl at himself the vicious attacks and slurs that he had faced his entire life. Majors gave an amazing performance.
That was my thought. You can't win for losing on this issue. If they had portrayed more racism, there would have been cries of protest that it was "woke" and anti-white. As it is, the film included plenty of evidence of the racism Jesse Brown faced: apart from directly showing the hostility of the army guy who thought he had a chance with Liz Taylor (as if), it gave plenty of indirect evidence, such as the way he had of motivating himself by hurling at himself in the mirror the ugly racial epithets that had been thrown at him his whole life, his story about how he was forced to do the swim test ten times and the others tried to make him fail, his worry that the carrier radio control would purposely misdirect his plane so that he would crash, the fact that his CO refused to pin his wings on him at his graduation, etc.
While he is no Laurence Olivier, he is not such a bad actor as you suggest (e.g., watch Seven or Seven Years in Tibet). He even won a supporting Oscar recently. I assume the director wished for him to play it this way - childlike and ignorant, the idea being that he was incarnated for the first time, so had no experience of being a living being. You can criticize that decision and Pitt's performance, but let's not distort the film just to gratuitously insult Pitt.
OMG, it's a movie (and not a realistic one at that), not a forensic investigation. Susan falls madly in love with Death, but your problem with the film is that she did not inform everyone right away that daddy had passed away. Seriously?!!! In fact, she didn't even see his body. For all she knows, he walked to the other side of the bridge and she didn't follow him. It's his birthday party. At some point they will realize he is missing, search for him and find his lifeless corpse. An autopsy will clearly establish that he died of natural causes.
Luca was a loyal lieutenant, so he did what he was told. It was Vito who appears to have badly misjudged the situation. What we see in this film is the importance of knowing when to strike, doing so ruthlessly, and lulling your opponent into a false sense of security. Vito clearly saw Sollozzo as someone to be concerned about, but he completely underestimated him and did not foresee that he and the Tataglia's were about to strike. That was not Luca's fault - he was just following orders: he was putting out feelers, having no conception that they were about to knock him off (if they were going to assassinate Don Corleone, obvious they would have to take out his "muscle" first).
Michael learns this both in his idea to nail Sollozzo and his ultimate plan to knock off the heads of the other families. The other families thought he was a vulnerable greenhorn, and he lulled them into a false sense of security by accepting the offer to meet with the Tataglia's, which they took as a sign that he did not see his assassination coming. So they didn't see his move and were much easier targets as a result.
I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse.
I agree with your point that this is a key scene, but I think it provides more insight to the audience than to Michael. Michael was a marine who fought in WWII and was decorated. I have to imagine he had already realized that he had very steady nerves and was cool as a cucumber under fire.
After the meeting in which he turned down Sollozzo, Vito very angrily upbraids Santino for "letting someone outside the family know what you think". For this reason, I have to assume that the reasons he gave Sollozzo for turning down his offer were not necessarily the actual, genuine reasons. However, we don't really gain much other insight into why Vito says no. Santino and Tom both are in favor and give there reasons, but when they ask Vito what his decision is going to be, the scene ends and we don't find out.
Quite honestly, I don't know what his actual reasons were. He's smart enough to know that this might incite a war (of course, his casual behavior that got him shot might indicate otherwise, that Sollozzo was right and he was "slipping"). In any case, in the end, he was nearly killed, Sonny was killed, Michael joined the family business (which upset his lifelong plans for Michael), Luca Brasi and Paulie were killed, as were Sollozzo, Captain McClusky and Bruno Tattaglia (and I assume there were many other corpses strewn about the place that we didn't see). All of this was unleashed because of Vito's refusal, yet, in the end, he gave in and agreed to the drug trade. So wasn't his initial refusal foolish and costly?
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