I never understood how the bedroom assassins died in part 2 ?

I suppose Fredo could have killed them.

To me Tom Hagan always seemed abit shady in the following scene when Michael tells him it wasn't a lack of trust or confidence.

Was it ever explained who killed them ?

I don't think the shooters were identified, and the order was to get rid of the bodies. Even though Michael gave Rocco the order to keep them alive, you don't see him exactly broken up over it.

Few scenarios - there was an inside man with the shooting team to dispose of the other shooters, they shot themselves, or an overeager Corleone button shot them. I doubt it was Fredo. Deanna was hysterical after seeing the bodies, and you see Fredo dragging her away in his robe and pajamas. Besides, we know from the attempted hit on Vito that Fredo is an expert with firearms.

Which reminds me...just how did Fredo make his bones anyway?

I don't think he did - he's basically Vito's caddie.

In the book, of course, Fredo seems to have been a tough guy at some point. The transition to the movie Fredo is an amazing thing.

No, we never find out who murdered the two assassins. However, in other threads over a year or two ago it was one of those topics that was discussed endlessly and I know that in those discussions I stated that Fredo would be the last of my suspects. So, if Michael also excludes Fredo, then once Fredo revelas himself as a traitor, Micheal has to figure that there are two traitors in the family.

However, in all these discussions about Fredo's complicity in Michael's attempted murder, one thing that we may have missed is Fredo's possible relationship with Geary or Turnbull. Remember when Geary meets with Michael and reveals that he has sources that have exposed Michael's proposed takeover of the Tropigala? I wonder if Geary's source was Fredo. Of course, unless I missed it, I don't think the film reveals a link between Geary and Roth.

I think it was a three man team with Johnny Ola as the third shooter who "cleaned up" on the way out. He made sure nobody could ever trace the hit back to Roth.

The closest thing to a Geary/Roth link is through Questadt.

Ola meets Geary and the other Senators early New Year's Eve at the first nightclub.

This question has puzzled us for a long time. Consider what Michael told Tom after the shooting: "Unless I'm very wrong, they're dead already...killed by someone close to us...inside...very frightening." Not only that: The dead shooter closest to the camera has his throat cut, so the killer(s) had to be part of the shooting team.

How close? Not Tom. Probably not Rocco and/or Neri. Michael doesn't totally dismiss them as suspects, but after Michael returns from Cuba, they seem to be back in his good graces. And probably not Fredo because we see him in his robe and pj's, trying to calm his hysterical wife. Michael may have been wrong in thinking the culprit was someone "close to us...inside," unless it was Johnny Ola and his men (referred to by Michael when he sent Rocco to get something to eat for them when he met with Johnny in the boathouse). Johnny was "close to Michael" for dealmaking purposes, and he and his men were physically inside the compound. That's a big stretch, and I don't necessarily believe it. I'm grasping, just like everyone else.

Geary's source was Turnbull, because, after Geary tells Michael that his move will leave him with a "technical problem...the license will be in Klingman's name," Michael immediately replies, "Turnbull is a good man."

Good posts thanks.

What does Michael say about the assassins, something like "there from New York" ?

Just in that scene afterwards Tom always looked very nervous speaking with Michael. Then again maybe that was natural considering it was just an attempted hit lol.

I thought it was Michael, but I pulled up the scene and it's Rocco that says that they're from New York, and they'll be unable to get anything out of them now. Michael tells them to fish them out, then he vanishes. After the bodies are fished out, Hagen tells Rocco to get rid of the bodies.

Some folks have argued that Rocco did it (or had it done). I have some sympathy for that point of view, because if Rocco was a traitor of some sort then it explains how easily he was thrown away by Michael at the end of the film.

As I've mentioned on here before, Coppola was working on GF2 in close proximity to his work on "The Conversation", which in turn was influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up." The latter two films are steeped in ambiguity, and I think that it could very well be that at least some of the ambiguity in GF2 is intentional, instead of arising from successive drafts of the script and edits made to the final film.

If that is so, then whole worlds of possibility open up, including the possibility that Michael was driving certain events that he first seems to be responding to. And if that is so, then there is a very clear candidate for who killed the shooters, and that is Bussetta.

What I've never understood is, how could any third shooter - if there was one - manage to escape from the compound after having killed the other two hitmen?

Bear in mind that this is a gated property with what presumably is a state-of-the-art security system - including round-the-clock surveillance, flood lights, guard dogs, armed guards, and possibly more. Also bear in mind that once the machine guns began firing into Michael's bedroom, that entire security apparatus leaped into immediate action - at which point, time for any subsequent action by the shooters, and for the shooter of the shooters, became very limited indeed.

Recall that the bodies of the two shooters were found some distance from the house - meaning their execution would not have occurred until they had reached that point, however long it took them to run there. After having executed them, the alleged third shooter would then have had to get out of there - immediately - without being detected and without being pursued.

Attempting to flee into the woods on foot means he would have had to find a way over or through the fence or wall - again without being detected or pursued - then to a waiting vehicle of some sort...probably with dogs hot on his tail at the time. By my reckoning then, the only possible way to escape would have been via the lake, as it's the only area of the compound not surrounded by a fence or wall. There would have to have been a boat of some sort, waiting to spirit him away - quickly enough and quietly enough to avoid detection. Not an easy feat, one depending upon split-second execution, that could very easily have gone awry, had even one element of the plan not gone as anticipated.

Furthermore, it looks to me as if the two shooters were found in a creek on the woods side of the house - not the lake side of the house. If so, and if my theory about a lake escape is sound, it would mean that after having executed the hitmen, the third shooter would then have had to cross back over the "hottest" area of the compound to get to the lake - at which point the entire area would already be crawling with armed men and guard dogs. Again, not an easy feat.

IMO, the timing and the logistics just don't fit. I don't see how it could have played out in this way.

~ Q

Q, I agree. The logistics of the attempt, the escape, and the assassin's murder are almost insurmountable. Also, didn't the creek feed into a tinhorn culvert? Was that the intended escape route?

Of course, if Fredo (and I just cannot see Fredo being so) was not the one who killed the assassins, then there were two traitors in the family. However, Michael never uses the plural and does not seem to make any effort to find out.

Or Michael engineered it as a false flag attack to shift blame on Pentangeli/Roth. Somebody on the inside would have opened the windows.

If I understand correctly, are you and Pete suggesting that Michael might actually have hired the two gunmen to shoot into his own bedroom, as a pretext by which to go to war with Hyman Roth? I just don't see how that could be credible.

While Michael may not have been the most devoted husband in the world, I can't see him ever doing anything to put Kay directly in the line of fire of a machine gun attack. More broadly, I can't see how Michael would ever have needed to create such a pretext in the first place. He was more than powerful enough to have gone after Roth for any reason he might choose...or for no reason whatsoever. It's not as if he had to answer to anybody, after all.

~ Q

Again, I agree Q. What Don has to fabricate a reason to go after another Don, Mafia or not? The seeds of Michael's antipathy toward Roth were planted when Michael decided that a few casinos were just not enough.

No, I'm throwing that out there as a possiblity. It does seem a bit extreme to put Kay in the line of fire (post-abortion might be a different story) but it seems a bit odd that:

- The shooting occurs not long after Pentangeli storms out of the boat house, angry that Michael's perceived loyalties were with Roth and not the family. Pentangeli was almost insubordinate in front of Rocco, Neri and Hagen. After Pentangeli departs, Michael tells Neri he's already made his plans.
- The window drapes could only be opened from the inside of the house. Granted a lot of people were at the compound that day, but I doubt anyone would reach the inner sanctum of Michael's house without drawing attention.l
- The shooters' aim seems a bit high -- bullet holes are visible at the top of and above the headboard.
- The shooters turn up dead, and Rocco deems from a glance that they're from New York, but then says he doesn't recognize them.
- Rocco and Michael are non-plussed that the shooters are dead.
- Before the shooters were found, Michael already handed the reins over to Hagen and had plans to depart for Miami via train that coming morning; a rather rash move and not exactly the methodical planning Michael was known for. Additionally, Michael tells Hagen he knows the shooters are already dead.
- Michael uses the shooting to blame Roth, and encourage Pentangeli to make the deal with the Rosato Brothers. Conversely, Michael blames Pentangeli when meeting with Roth in Miami.

It wouldn't necessarily be that way. Michael could simply have arranged for Fredo to "bump into" Johnny Ola in Berverly Hills and then monitored things as Ola and Roth worked on Fredo (edit: so Roth and Ola would have arranged for the shooters). To that I should add that I think pretty firmly that the dominant story line of the film is the Michael-Fredo story, so if this would be a pretext it would be designed to catch Fredo in disloyalty so that he could be killed. Obviously, under this scenario Michael is more or less a psychopath.

As I posted above, I still no understand why anyone thinks that Michael needed a "pretext" to go after Roth. Who would he be trying to convince?

This remains one of the most intruiging topics of the films. Because they were immediately recognised by Rocco to be from New York, it might very well be that they were from the same family, possibly the Rosato faction. It appears that Roth's and Johnny Ola's men were stationed in Florida, so that rules out that they were from Ola's crew, which wouldn't have been a smart move as that would have immediately put the blame on them. Perhaps it were assassins that Roth knew from his Murder Inc. days, considering that Moe Greene was a Murder Inc. hitman and Roth's protégé.

Is it possible that the guys who were found were killed before the shooting occurred?

It wasn't Rocco who said this: "Looks like they were hired out of New York, I don't recognize them." One of the guards said it.

But there are so many problems with the assassination scenario. Q has pointed out a few. From what I can tell, they would have had to traverse nearly the entire compound to make their escape. Given the brief time between the shooting and their escape, how would anyone have the time to murder both of them them not to mention that they were both armed? Also, taking the time to empty a magazine into the boss's bedroom window seems a rather doubtful and risky approach. You can tell that the bedroom window glass is lead-content making it much less penetrable than regular glass and also subject to deflection.

I stand corrected. Rocco was the only one I could distinguish in that dark shot, forgetting his voice was much higher pitch than the other buttonman.

The two assassins are found at a drain pipe large enough for people to go through. So they evidently entered the compound through that pipe, or at the very least it served as their escape route.

But it no doubt dumped into the lake. To where would they be escaping?

Didn't Johnny Ola and his men arrive via boat earlier in the day (just before Pentangeli makes his first speaking appearance drinking from the garden hose)?

I guess a boat was waiting at the spot were it dumped into the lake. Perhaps the assassins had to swim for a few metres. Not unbelievable imo. Anyway, it is clear for the viewer that they were to escape through that drain pipe.

While watching II again I noticed the landscaping in front of Michael's house. That landscaping is rather low profile and rather aesthetic. Because of that, I'm wondering where in the world the two assassins could hide until they saw Michael in the window. That hiding place would have to be from a vantage where they could see him there. Also, there was no guarantee that Michael would locate himself in line of fire. Also, why not kill him as he entered his house? Why wait? If the assassins could conceal themselves before the shooting, they could also shoot Michael with a rifle. Of course, FFC does exercise alot of directorial discretion.

To give FFC his due: Michael might have been bodyguarded or have been with others when he entered his home. But the shooters knew it'd be only Kay and him in the bedroom.

Your point about the foliage is well taken. It looked as if the shooters were using submachine guns. They're called that because they fire "submilitary" rounds--handgun ammo, for use in close-in fighting. They'd have to have been pretty close (>75 yards) to score a hit.

If you have those window drapes open, why not use a rifle as a shiper shot? Would be far less random than peppering the room with machine gun fire.