Summary
Tom Hagen arrives at a brothel, where he's directed to a room at the end of the hallway. In it, we find Senator Geary sitting, shocked, with a towel wrapped around his waist. Tom explains that Geary is lucky it happened at a place that Fredo owns—otherwise Tom wouldn't be able to help him. Geary starts talking about how he didn't do anything, and eventually the camera pans over to reveal a dead woman draped with bloody sheets, her wrists strapped to the bedpost. Geary is hysterical, saying he blacked out, saying they had done it before. But Tom quiets him. We pan over to see Al Neri, a Corleone family enforcer, washing his hands in the bathroom, and Tom nods at him—implying that the Corleones have in fact set up Geary, drugging him and then killing the girl to make it look like Geary did it, thus putting him in their debt to cover it up. Geary is now at their mercy. All that remains, Tom says, is their friendship.
As Tom continues his surrogacy for Michael, he has Kay and the kids locked into the compound. Kay asks if that makes her a prisoner, and Tom says that's not the way they look at it.
The fact that Kay is all cooped up in the compound proves ironic given the fact that Michael's supposed exile to search for the traitor in his family lands him in Cuba. We're introduced to the island with documentary (or documentary-like) shots of its crowded, colorful streets, but see the real heart of the country in a private meeting. There, we watch the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista meet with a group of American heads of business, plus two mafia figures—Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth. Batista tells them that the rebels are nothing to worry about, and that business will carry on as usual. Of course, this is thrown into question when a car carrying Michael is stopped while a rebel is getting arrested by the military. The rebel jumps into a car and explodes a bomb inside of it.
At a birthday celebration for Hyman Roth, Roth says he's reached an age where he wants to dole out his holdings to friends. He says he's putting Michael in charge of all of the Havana holdings, but splitting things up amongst the other men gathered there. When Roth is done with his little abdication bit, Michael recalls the incident with the rebel he saw earlier. He notes that the soldiers are paid to fight but the rebels are not, and says he thinks that means that they can win. Roth takes Michael into private to tell him that he knows Michael withheld a $2 million payment because he feared the potential power of the rebels. Roth is unshaken, and puts his confidence behind Batista, saying that the mafia is just a step away from installing a US president as keen on their business interests as Batista is.
Fredo arrives with a suitcase containing the $2 million in question, asking what it's for. Michael tells him it's a gift for Batista. The two go out for a drink, and Fredo lets slip that he was angry at Michael, seemingly regretful. There's a flash of recognition in Michael's eyes, and it seems like he found his traitor. Michael follows this up by talking about Roth's new plan to have him killed, and asks Fredo to go along with it. Michael will instead have Roth killed. Fredo is obviously caught off guard.
Michael then goes to meet with Roth, who says he knows Fredo brought the money, and wonders why Michael is holding it back. Michael responds by asking who gave the go-ahead to have Frank Pantangeli killed. Roth is quickly infuriated and tells a story about a prominent mobster who, when he was murdered, Roth asked no questions about. He tells Michael to leave the money on the table by the time he wakes up from a nap if they're to remain partners.
While Michael and Fredo are out entertaining Senator Geary for New Year's Eve, Johnny Ola comes up and he and Fredo introduce themselves, saying they've never met before. Michael is suspicious. While the whole crew is out watching a sex show, Michael gives the go-ahead for the hit to go forward. His hitman first kills Johnny Ola and then slinks off to the room where Roth is napping. Right when midnight hits, Michael's hit on Roth fails, as his bodyguard is shot dead by military police. Covered in confetti, Michael confronts Fredo and says he knows Fredo was the one who betrayed him. Fredo scurries away. To cap it all off, Batista announces his resignation, signaling the rebels have won. We see Michael and the other American business leaders quickly leave the festivities. As Michael tries to get Fredo to join him on a plane back to Miami, Fredo disappears into the crowd. Riots break out as rebels take the streets.
Tom meets Michael in Miami where they catch up on business. Tom made sure that Michael's son got a good gift for Christmas and tells Michael that Roth made it out of Miami and is recovering from a stroke in the hospital, and that Michael's bodyguard is dead. Michael directs Tom to get word to Fredo that Michael knows Roth deceived Fredo, and that Michael forgives him. Just before they disband, Tom tells Michael that Kay miscarried. In a fit of rage, Michael demands to know if the child was a boy. Tom doesn't know.
Analysis
A big part of what makes Coppola's 1970s films so great is their caustic yet incisive accounts of the ills central to the American project. The Conversation, released in 1974, the same year as this film, takes on the rising American surveillance state and the queasy goings-on of an intelligence operation that invaded the lives of everyday Americans. Apocalypse Now (1978) appropriates Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to depict the Vietnam war and its resulting senseless destruction as a flight of imperial machismo madness. The Godfather draws parallels between corporate America and organized crime, and this film takes the allegory one step further and shows the blurred line between the law and the criminal at the level of state power.
Senator Pat Geary is the key character to follow to trace how this theme develops. Senator Geary, early in the film, goes on an anti-Italian tirade against Michael and the Corleone family under the guise of standing up for what's right and decent in America. At the time, Michael tells him that they're part of the same hypocrisy. And indeed, when Geary is found with a dead sex worker at a Nevada brothel owned by Fredo, he finds himself needing the cover of the mafia to stay safe from the law. It's true that the film implies that Geary was set up, but regardless, he is far from innocent. We see him attempt to return the favor later in the film when Senator Geary makes a grandstand at a Senate hearing where Michael testifies, going on and on about how important the Italian people are to the fabric of America.
Senator Geary's position as the icon of that grey area between legal and extra-legal becomes most explicit in the Havana scenes. He is ostensibly there as a representative of the United States government while Michael is there to visit the US-installed dictator Fulgencio Batista. But we only see the senator taking part in the seedier aspects of the trip, such as attending a sado-masochistic sex show and schmoozing with the soon-to-be-toppled bourgeoisie. It's never explicitly stated, but we get the sense that he is Michael's sherpa to gaining favor with the Cuban government, literally performing international diplomatic work on behalf of a mafia family.
The one place we don't find Geary is in that strange, massive boardroom meeting where Batista receives a solid-gold telephone from an American utility company. We see a massive conference table flanked by heads from every major sector of American business—oil, telecom, etc.—and two mobsters, Michael and Hyman Roth. Here we have Coppola at his most on-the-nose. He's showing heads of business and mobsters alike cavorting with a hugely unpopular dictator, working with the soon-to-be-deposed president to secure comfortable profits. It's crucial to remember that by the time The Godfather Part II was made, Americans were becoming increasingly aware of foul imperial plots, first by way of the floundering Vietnam War, and increasingly with revelations about various dictators installed in CIA coups in Latin American countries like Chile and Bolivia. Hence, Coppola is not just suggesting that corporate America colludes with a criminal element to do business in places like Cuba, but is actually ushered in to those countries by the American government itself, under the guise of squashing communism.
