My view of Luca in the Movie and the book is immensly different. The first time I saw the Movie before reading the book I didn't see Luca as some big huge bad guy. In his few scenes in the movie he seemed like a blabbering idiot(the wedding "Masculine child" scene) He was also killed off on his first mission in the movie without even taking some one down with him. In Part 1 u can't really appreaciate how ruthless he is, which is much different from the book which goes into greater detail and gives many more stories about Luca.

I would have liked to see more of Luca in the movie. He seemed like an awesome character.

But because you never really see the "very scary guy" part of him, it makes him somewhat mysterious.

Luca is one of the (too many) characters from the novel who are given either short shrift or no shrift in the film. I'd like to have seen the film portray the Don's rise and Luca's role in whacking the Capone gunmen, and maybe a (brief) look at the horrible scene with Luca and Filomena. For that matter, I'd like to have seen the Bocchicchio Family and how they helped Michael get back from Sicily; Sonny and the boiler repairmen, and Neri's career as a cop, and how Michael wooed him.

Gosh, I've gotta read the book - I had no idea of all the great information I was missing. You guys are right though, the movie showed very little of the scary man Luca, but you knew he was a very important player by the way the Don received him at the reception. Luca his most valuable friend

Luca was so bad ass that not even Sonny could call him off, sorry to say but Luca would put Sonny in his place any day.

I must agree. Luca's character was so advanced in the book. I, too, wish there had been more than the "bandleader" story that Michael told (which, quite frankly, was not very scary). I thought that one of the most scary Luca stories was how he took care of the Capone henchmen in the book when they threatened the Don's empire. If THAT had been told in the movie, it would've established him as a frightening and ruthless man.

I have a feeling we'll see more of Luca Brasi in the new Godfather book, and maybe in any flashbacks from a new movie - if there ever is one.

I need to re-read the book.

Dont you mean when it comes out?
I wrote both the Capone scene and the Filomena scene into my GF4 script, but I dont know if I really want to use them. Luca was decribed as suck a badass it sort of leaves it up to your imagination as to what he did to get that reputation.