If one wants to find holes in the script, that isn't very difficult to do. You can come across several without even trying.

It's when some try to examine every word of every scene with a fine-toothed comb, and/or find justification for EVERY hole, no matter how unexplainable...that we are venturing a bit far out into the stratosphere.

Kind of like Birthers.

Kind've, yes!

Both groups insist upon walking down a road that leads to nowhere.

Michael told Fredo his plan because he probably had a tail on Fredo to see if Fredo would go to Roth with it. It would also serve to scare th hell out of Fredo, and maybe Michael wanted to see Fredo's reaction. In any case, it is clear that after the Michael-Fredo scene, things between Michael and Roth had soured to the point that Michael and Roth were sending each other signals that they were not allies at all. It wa after th encounter with Fredo that michael demanded to know from Roth who gave the order to kill Pentangeli, and Roth's ominous statement that he was going to take a nap, and when he woke up if the monet was on the table he had a partner, but if it was not on the table, he did not.

As for the bit about Tom knowhing Ola from the "old days," I always thought it implausible that Fredo didn't know Ola from all the time he spent in Vagas with Moe Green, who was Roth's protoge.

Well DT, that's a good point. But I wonder why Michael asked if he already knew the answer just as you knew it. By asking, he would have alerted Fredo to his knowledge of his association with Roth. Why do that? At this point, what benefit does Michael derive from asking the question or from revealing his plans for Roth's demise?

It was one of the most brilliant scenes in the Trilogy. Each knew what the other was up to, but both were hanging tough for their objectives: Michael to find the traitor, Roth to get the $2 million. Plus Roth's soliloquey...

So maybe Michael was using Fredo to send a message to Roth?

TB and DT, I don't understand why Michael would risk his life by revealing any of his plans in an environment run by a dictator, where he had few resources to call on, but where his enemy had an ally who commanded the resources of a government.

Agreed.

I don't see any logical way that Michael telling Fredo can be reconciled with Michael suspecting Fredo.

That is because there is none...other than for audience benefit as to learning of Michael's plans for Roth, and to include a final 'intimate' scene between the brothers before Fredo's betrayal is confirmed.

For me, I believe that Mike didn't beleive Fredo was the traitor until Superman, his utter abhorrence when he hears Fredo say take Ola took him to see the show is far to agonised for someone who suspected all along.

I think he tells Fredo because he's his brother, that telling him can't do any harm and it allows him to share what he knows with someone he thought loved him. You can see at the start 'I can't control her Mikey' 'You're my brother Fredo, you don't have to apologise to me' that there is a bond between the two, at least on Michael's part.

If he suspected Fredo, he'd have told Tom he suspected Fredo when they talk after the shooting, only Rocco and Neri's name were mentioned, not Fredo's. Tom being the only man Michael can absolutely trust would be informed would he not?

He couldn't rule it out of course, but I think Fredo was last on his list of suspects.

That is just about the only credible explanation, although it's a long stretch. Michael was hardly the sentimental type, and, since Michael told Tom that Fredo was "weak and stupid, and this is life and death," the same logic would have led Michael not to trust Fredo with his Roth plan, if for no other reason than Fredo could have stupidly blurted it out (as he stupidly blurted out that he and Ola had been to the Superman show).



Again, by telling Tom that Fredo was "weak and stupid," he was telling Tom that Fredo couldn't be trusted. At that point I think he meant trusted to run the family in his absence. So, I agree with you: at that point Michael didn't think Fredo had an active role in the shooting. But I think Michael wasn't ruling out Fredo having done something inadvertently through his own carelessness and stupidity.

So if he suspected Fredo just a little bit, why didnt he latch upon what Fredo said at the cafe

Fredo - I was mad at you....
Mike - What? What do you mean?
Fredo - Oh nothing
Mike - Come on Fredo, what
Fredo - Well...when I said I didnt know Ola, I wasnt being honest, because I'm scared of what will happen when you find out
Mike - Found out what
Fredo - I told Ola things about you I shouldn't have, I'm so sorry Mikey, its my fault you got hit, but I SWEAR I didnt know it was going to be a hit.

I dunno, something like that. Mike was so gone though, he would have killed Freddie even if he confessed in the fashion seen above

Michael doesn't suspect Fredo. As someone above pointed out, when he does hear Fredo reference Roth and Ola, he is visibly devastated and only then gives his bodyguard the okay to proceed with Roth's assassination. Thus, Fredo broke his heart.

When Michael refers to Fredo as weak and stupid, he is really expressing a certain contempt not so much for those characteristics of Fredo's in particular, but for those characteristics generally as manifested by anybody. Remember, in the phrase before that he says of Fredo that he has a good heart. That is also why in the boathouse scene Michael becomes enraged because Fredo is manifesting his weak and stupid characteristics.

I always felt it was harsh of Michael to refer to Fredo as stupid to Tom who grew up with Fredo the same as he did, its not like he needs to be told about Fredo. Weak maybe, but Stupid, harsh. Fredo wasn't stupid in my view, just weak.

Harsh, yes. But, as Michael said, it was "life and death." I think he felt he owned Tom an explanation of why he wasn't entrusting the family to Fredo. I have a feeling that Tom was closest to Fredo following Sonny's death--he sure wasn't close to Michael.

Yeah, he tries his best to look after him, but Mike is out control by the end, he could have found himself killed quite easily.