Why Did Don Corleone Only Have 2 Capos? | The Godfather Explained

how people The Godfather follows Don Vito Corleone the head of the most powerful of the five New York crime families as he leads his family and looks to protect his dynasty from dangers such as rival mob families and assassination attempts an attempt is made on Don Kong's life which begins a slow transition of power from father to son and by the end of the film Vito is dead and Michael Corleone is the new head of the family the second film continues taking a look at Michael's Reign and his transition into a cold-blooded clinical boss lacking the warmth of his father and the sense of importance of family he had the film also charts the rise of Vito Corleone from his days as an orphaned immigrant child to a respected and feared member of the community instrumental to veto's rise are his two loyal friends Salvatore and Peter clemenza it is clemenza who actually initially draws veto into a life of crime when he asks Vita to hide a set of guns in his home and as a favor he and Vito steal a rug for veto's wife and so starts the beginning of a beautiful friendship which climaxes with clemenza and tessio becoming subordinates of veto after Vita proves his worth by ending the tyranny of local Charlotte and mob boss Don fanucci by firing a bullet into fanuchi's mouth and essentially taking over the neighborhood but as a help to the people not a virus like fanuchi was Vito earns the respect love and fear of those around him including his two friends his street muscle political connections influence and power grows as his empire built on gambling bootlegging and Corruption thrives even still he is known as a generous man who lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to his friends and above all family by the time the first film starts he is now the most powerful man in the Underworld and it's a testament to the loyalty and respect He commands that the two friends he started out with to SEO and clemenza are still by his side after all these years as Vito's Kappa regimes the Dua also having become much more powerful over the years largely in part thanks to veto's intelligence and shepherding a Kappa regime or Capo commonly known as a captain in English often refers to a high-ranking member of a crime family who heads a crew of soldiers made up of made men made men being gangsters who have been formally inducted as full members of a crime family Capo's report directly to the head of a family and often after the death of the family's head a capo steps up to replace him other positions of significance include the underboss a second in command often a street boss more directly involved in the rackets the families are involved in and a conciliary The Advisory position to the boss at the lowest level of syndicates you have Associates of the family then made soldiers then capos and then the underboss and finally the boss himself the lack of interaction between the men at the bottom and the man at the top means that the bosses are often insulated from law enforcement as they have very little interaction with the guys actually committing murders buffers the family has a lot of buffers now this does bring up an interesting question of course as they report to the boss capos have to be trusted men but why does veto after all these years in charge of his family still only have the same two capos under him as he did when he started out in a life of crime why does he only have two capos when he's supposed to be the most powerful gangster in New York maybe the whole of the US in real life families and even depictions in fictional media such as the TV series The Sopranos we have shown that mob families typically have numerous captains maybe as little as four to six or as much as 10 depending on the size and power of the family and yet the the corleones only have two what gives well it could simply be one of the elements of The Godfather that isn't realistic I wouldn't go so far as to call it an error but Mario pooser's novel has a few things here and there that make you think hmm that's probably not how it would quite be in real life like the German Irish Tom Hagen being given a role as a conciliary although to be fair that is shown to be a controversial decision and Vito has his reasons for doing so like making his Affairs seem more legitimate by having a qualified lawyer by his side but there are just some things like Tony Soprano visiting a therapist and act punishable by death in the mob which you just have to swallow in order to enjoy a piece of entertainment The Godfather isn't a documentary after all still though it is worth mentioning that Vito doesn't exactly have two capos if you include his son Sony Corleone who technically is the underboss we can say that Vito has three but still it isn't much perhaps it shows how higher the standards of Don Corleone when it comes to trust and values that in all the years he has been at the top there is no one who he can trust enough to take on a position as a fourth Capital all of the men in his immediate vicinity clemenza tessio Sonny Tom Fredo and later Michael are either family members or close friends who came up with Vito from the bottom as shown in the second film and that includes his previous concilieri jenko Fredo hardly has the capabilities and there are no other characters that have such a close relationship with Vito so rather than ask why Vita only has two capos perhaps we should ask who could actually become one on the veto there's actually something interesting of The Godfather novel does with Vito's capos and that is that Vito keeps the two separate from each other at different ends of the city not giving them the opportunity to meet with each other in secret so that there is no chance of the duo conspiring against him even with his two friends Vito was still careful and tessio and his regime is so far removed from vetoes that the general consensus in the Underworld is that tessio runs a completely different family many are actually unaware of how close the link between Vito and tessio actually is that tessio is a capo working directly under veto and not a head of his own family with vague links to the Koreans this isn't really addressed in the movies as tessio is with the rest of the family during the meeting with the Turk the only reference I can see is possibly when Sony phones tessio and introduces himself as Santino Corleone implying the two don't talk much and tests you're inquiring why Sony doesn't use clemen's men instead of his the reason he asks is possibly because he wants to maintain the illusion that his family is separate from the corleones following Vito's Mantra of allowing your friends to overestimate you and your enemies to underestimate you this two points I'm making with this the first is that tessio and clemen's crews are so powerful that they are pretty much their own crime families so to ask why veto only has two capos misses the point as to the fact that tessian commenda as capos are more powerful than bosses of other families Don Vito in essence is a boss of bosses which funnily enough is a real term used to describe extraordinarily powerful crime bosses instead of having several capos six or seven who run small regimes he has just two regimes but they are both very large comparably though he might have only two capos those capos will have numerous soldiers working under them this chart from the Senate hearings in the second film should give you an idea of just how large the coralion family is in spite of there only being three living capos listed on the board when you consider sunny in the first film saying they have a hundred button men looking for salotso it gives you an idea of the Corleone's strength more than a hundred members in a single family an example of the size of the corleones can be found in the novel after veto shooting with Clemente's regime having tasks that need to be carried out straight after his crew has to take over Security on the mall from tessios he has to improve the security he has to take up defensive moves in the Bronx to prepare for war and he has to take out the family's traitor in a public fashion in another family you might have a different crew carry out each of these tasks but clemenza's regime is so big his crew does everything the second point is that if tessio is ostensibly considered a separate family maybe there are others that aren't according to the book and the film in case you're wondering but who's to say Vito doesn't have another family out there working directly under him ready to fight at a moment's notice who knows how much secret power he had how far his influence stretched after all a deleted scene in the first film shows that Michael and Vito had Rocco lampone building a secret regime secret from even Korean family members so if that's one secret family out there and with Vito being a shrewd calculating and careful as he is no doubt he had contingencies in place and hidden power in places that are not apparent so ultimately looking at Don Corleone and thinking of him as a man with just two captains is really not doing him and his family Justice and that doesn't include Specialists like Luca Brasi bodyguard personal drivers and enforcers it's also worth mentioning from a narrative point of view it's a lot easier for a film and book to give you two characters names to remember rather than 10. the story is more powerful with two couples one of whom becomes a traitor and the other who remains loyal and these two men being so close to veto and each almost having half the strength of the colion family rather than just being two of 10 or 15 capos so what are your thoughts let me know in the comments below subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching before we finish I just want to thank my patrons Andre Millington Nicholas Curtis Dirk K and Daniel P and also my channel members the new on Glam 24 Rikers Michael awatui and Damien Irving

Channel: CineRanter

Views: 78,157

Keywords: the godfather, the godfather analysis, al pacino, marlon brando, francis ford coppola, don vito corleone, clemenza, tessio

Id: uRNNtm7CaVE

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022