My question comes from Part 2. After Michael makes his speech about how "you can kill anyone" which of course pertains to the Hyman Roth situation it is decided they are going to kill him. My question is, why would Rocco Lampone volunteer for such a suicidal hit?

At that point he held the rank of Caporegime and had plenty of men after him. Why not send a lowly button man? It didn't look like anyone needed alot of skill to kill Roth. One shot probably would have done him in. Plus, I remember that Clemenza mentions in the book that Rocco does have a family and the he should take them on vacation after the Paulie hit. Doesn't he know his wife might become a widow? Tom mentions that half the FBI will be their, which prwtty much guarentees that the hitman who kills Roth will mostly likely be killed or seriously wounded.

Did Michael actually give the order that Rocco should specifically be the one to carry out the killing? I might have missed that.

(This is my first topic on the boards, I hope you like it)

Sollozo,

Welcome to the boards.

This is a legitimate question that has been brought up and discussed many times here on the boards over the years. Here is a link to one of the threads that addressed this question. I hope that you find some of the posts in this link helpful and please give us your thoughts after reading these posts.

http://www.gangsterbb.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005652


Don Cardi

Well after reading those, I feel that Coppola just wanted a character the audience could identify with to be the assasain. If some random button had done it, we wouldn't had none it was really the Corleones. But when Rocco kills him it's clear who was behind the murder.

I don't know about Rocco being the traitor. Seconds after the hit happens buttons/guards are on the scene who are probably in Rocco's regime. He would have had to been pretty fast and covert to pull off killing the guys and getting back to infrom Michael. We never really find out who killed them, just that Fredo had something to do with Roth's guys getting into the compound.

I've been on the boards for a couple of months now. I had never considered the whole "Why Rocco?" question, mainly because I was more interested in Vito than Michael, and so was not so interested in contemporary parts of Part II. After reading through some of the Rocco strings that have been developed, there's a couple or three things that I think:

1. I think Fredo's clear of any knowledge that there was going to be a hit or kidnapping of Michael, or of any knowledge that Rocco had turned. I think the "I'm smaht!" exchange is Fredo's confessional, and contains all he knows.

2. I think that you have to give Coppola some credit. You have to give him some credit that he (not Michael) didn't just kill people for no reason. And you have to assume that, in some way, there was going to be some echo of the end of Part I in the end of Part II.

3. So on to Rocco: the first thing is, you can't just say that his death is to show that Michael is callous to the people around him. After all, he's already killing his own brother. That would seem to settle that issue.

I think the best way to figure out Rocco's role is to work backwards from the endings. Who gets killed at the end of Part I: Barzini, Tataglia, Stracci, Cuneo, Moe Green, Tessio, Carlo. All proven opponents of the Corleones.

End of Part II: Roth, Fredo, Frankie and Rocco. The first three are all proven betrayers of Michael or the family, but what'd Rocco do?

Well, we have this attempted hit that Michael thinks (or says he thinks) was an inside job. It would seem to go completely unexplained unless Rocco was being punished.

4. As I said, I never really considered the Rocco question until the last few weeks. Even before that, though, it always seemed to me that the officer who shot Rocco looked just a little too neat and clean, a little too unhurried in what he was doing.

Bottom line: I think that at some point there was probably a Rocco storyline that mirrored the Carlo storyline of Godfather I, but that it got swamped under everything that was happening in Washington and Havana, and in the 1920's.

All subject to change of mind....

The funny thing is that there is nothing concrete to prove that Rocco was EVER in on the Tahoe hit attempt. All the theories have come from people's heads because of things implied throughout the movie. Rocco was head of security at Tahoe, Neri and Rocco had an underlying power struggle and Rocco was seemingly sent on a suicide mission by Michael.

I think this is proof that Part II is simply an amazing movie. That nothing can be said or shown to say that Rocco was involved with the Tahoe hit -- and yet many, many people agree that Rocco was in on it.

I personlly don't believe he was. But that's just me.

That leads me to another question... was Ola at the Tahoe compound? Could he have been the one to kill the bodyguards and get away through the tunnels? Or did he leave after his meeting with Michael?

If Michael had suspected Rocco of complicity in the Tahoe attack, he would have had him killed ASAP. Unlike Fredo, Rocco would have been too dangerous to let live. Rocco had simply outlived his usefulness to Michael, and he was expendable.
Johnny Ola and his men arrived at the compound conspicuously, and no doubt left conspicuously. Ola would have made sure Michael saw his men and him leave, in order to divert suspicion to Frankie.

You can put me in the camp of people who believe that Rocco was simply jealous that Neri had passed him over, and that he was willing to show Mike how loyal he was by going on what was most likely a suicide mission.

If Mike ever suspected Rocco, it was only briefly...during the scene with Tom in the boathouse Tom asks if it could be an inside job, and Mike answers indirectly "all our people are businesmen," thus making ANYTHING possible. My gut tells me he suspected Fredo all along.

The other possibility is that he'd leave the status quo intact, so that the conspiracy would continue to operate and he could determine its full extent. Then he could get rid of all traitors at the same time.

Did Michael believe it was a suicide mission? Maybe not. When he decided to kill Solozzo and McCluskey, he was taking the same risk. There could have have been gun-men at the restaurant who could have killed michael. IMO that is the significance of michael's "anyone can be killed" remark. He did what was necessary at that point. So he expects Rocco to do the same now. Ofcourse there would be FBI men sorrounding Roth. But similar risks were taken during Barzini's murder by Neri, the whole shoot-out during the attempt on Pentangeli's life etc.