Every good movie suffers from logic potholes. The goal is to avoid “crossing the threshold of tolerance,” as some guy wrote a few years ago in a piece I can’t find. There are some flaws in The Godfather, for instance. If Sonny has learned where Michael Corleone’s sitdown with The Turk is and Tessio has enough time to plant a gun, why can’t Sonny order a couple of skilled assassins to wait outside and slaughter the Turk when he leaves the restaurant? This of course would save Michael, whom Don Vito absolutely doesn’t want sullied by the family business, from having to hide out in Sicily and so on.

But it’s more dramatic and suspenseful, of course, to have the inexperienced Michael do the shooting at Louis’s Italian-American restaurant in the Bronx (will he blow it? get shot himself?) and so The Godfather is what it is. In actuality Don Corleone would so pissed at Sonny and Tom Hagen for getting Michael involved that he’d probably banish them to Sicily, but you can ignore this whole magilla without effort.

Movies live or die by their logic flaws being relatively subtle and under the water. “But you can only suffer so many shots below the waterline before the ship starts to sink,” that guy wrote. “If the audience’s illusion of intention is repeatedly or grossly challenged by logic problems, they will revolt.”