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Why did Nicolai want to kill Robert Rath at the end?

posted 15 years ago by planetmutty
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That part didn't seem to make much sense to me.

Nicolai sets himself up as the mark, and Rath takes the job. Nicolai says the cold war is coming to end and he needed to disappear. He knows Rath always goes for a body shot so he wears protection. Rath makes the 'kill', Nicolai gets to disappear, unknown to Rath. So Rath did what Nicolai wanted and yet he somes back 15 years later to extract his revenge on Rath?

I don't get it. Or was there some other reason Nicolai wanted Rath dead that I have missed?

When I said I wanted to be a comedian, they all laughed at me. Well, they're not laughing now!

[–] Bingedrinker 15 years ago

15 years back Rath was into games, the way Bain is at the moment of the film.

Nicolai didn't put out the hit on himself. He was AWARE a hit was being made on him by someone else through Rath. He played along at the time because it suited the situation.

Still he was furious over the betrayal. So he used Rath for 15 years as his personal anonymous enforcer. But he doesn't really care about Rath anymore, he needs to retrieve the disc and the money, any which way possible.

He just needs the disc and the money, a new assassin-for-hire won't be hard to find, he sets up number one and number two against each other. Trusting that Bain will do whatever nessecary to kill Rath.

I get the thought though. Nicolai scheming Rath all the time and in the end needing payback for what he did himself? Well, it's not like that. Whatever happened, Nicolai didn't want Rath to 'kill' him.

"Bless me, Father, for I have just killed quite a few men."