So Sonny insists that men go with Michael on his trip to the city to see Kay at the hotel.

What the film doesn't flesh out for me, is what happened to the men after they dropped Michael off at the hotel.

Did they go back to the family compound after dropping Mike off?

And they would then wait for Michael to call to come and pick him up?

Because Michel leaves the hotel to go and see his father in the hospital, by taxi...

They had to have stayed with Michael (maybe following him?). How else do Tom and the bodyguards get to the hospital so quickly?? I know Michael called them after he got into the hospital, but from Long Island, they got there fast enough that Tom witnessed the McCluskey confrontation??

Are you really Babe? Where have you been?

Coppola had to play fast and loose with that scene or the movie would have been 5 hours long. There's no way that a bunch of private detectives could have been assembled and transported to the hospital in the few minutes which the film allows.

I don't think Michael's bodyguards had anything to do with it.

Hi, olivant. I wanted to stop in and say Hi. Hope everyone is doing well. Glad to see some of the old-timers here.

But if Michael's body guards had followed him, surely Michael would have asked them to stand out in front of the building, or at his father's bedside.

I watched I and II this weekend and it prompted old/new questions.

Yes, what happened to the bodyguards? Sonny commands Clemenza to arrange bodyguards to escort Michael to the city. So, why did Michael take a taxi to the hospital? He could have dismissed the bodyguards at the hotel. However, would they risk disobeying Clemeza/Sonny especially knowing that something bad could happen to Michael?

All of the bodyguard scene stuff smacks of directoral license--Clemenza has an opportunity to call Michael "a civilian," the better to set him up as a non-civilian afterward. And, if the bodyguards had accompanied Michael to the hospital, we wouldn't have had his transition to a non-civilian ("I'm with you now, Pop"); Enzo Da Baker and his willingness to stand alongside Michael, and Michael's confrontation with McCluskey.

You're probably right TB. DL answers alot of the questions we have asked on this Board over the years.

Nice sequence of events Turnbull

What surprises me is why civilian Michael agreed to be driven by the bodyguards to Kay's hotel

Sure, he could have said, "No, Sonny, I'm going on my own." But that would have set up a confrontation with Sonny at a time of great stress. Better to go along with it, don't make an unnecessary scene.

Notice a shift of values: Clemenza is so confident of Mafia's "code of behavior" that he says Michael doesn't need an armed escort to the city because "Solozzo knows he's a civilian." But, by the end of the movie (~10 years later), civilians drop like flies: the hooker with Tattaglia; the bodyguards and chauffeur with Barzini, everyone in the elevator with Stracci. For that matter, Roth didn't care if his killers whacked Kay and the kids if they happened to be in Michael's bedroom in II.

Maybe once Michael made it past the tollbooth on the causeway they figured he was safe and went back home.

No doubt great sequence of events very nicely done

You couldn't help but notice that the two bodyguards in the front seat are sitting really close to each other. Hmm. Maybe that's why Michael had to take a taxi to the hospital: the bodyguards took off perhaps for an intimate dinner or maybe a triste. Maybe they got a room at the same hotel. It would be convenient.

Well, if Sonny could fool around, why not the bodyguards? It gives a whole new meaning to the term Buttonman.

Whilst the above civilian murders could be stretched to collateral casualties, the most brutal civilian murder was the Geary compromise - premeditated cold blooded taking of civilian hooker's life, just to get Geary in Corleone's pocket

and the act of killing Khartoum for Godson movie part

"Send some guys with him anyway"

Interesting how the responses are not dissimilar

That was ok because she had no family

Interesting point you raise. Is a hooker considered a civilian? Technically, she is a part of organized crime, albeit at the lowest of levels.

She didn't harm the Corleones.

She always made money for the brothel