Wasted Potential

Rating: 5/10 (23 November 2012)

A would-have-been stunning piece of film-making was completely destroyed by the ending.
This movie could have been in league with many other psychological crime thrillers of its genre such as "Se7en" and "Memento" if it had not completely butchered the ending in a completely anti-climactic and movie destroying sequence.
**SPOILERS***
Here is what I believe should have occurred, as opposed to the despicable Laura Linney brainwashing Jimmy into falling in love with his Alpha-Male stature.
As happens in the movie, Jimmy interrogates Dave as he kneels next to the Mystic River and simultaneously Sean discovers who the girls "real" killer is. The scenes cut between each other, and Sean is held at gunpoint. He tries to coax the kid out of shooting, and Jimmy gets more and more crazy at Dave. The scene escalates dramatically, and the cutting scenes portray that at the same time Jimmy stabs Dave (A satisfying climax the movie boasted before it went downhill), Sean is shot in the chest by the kid and collapses. Everything else between Jimmy and Dave happens exactly the same. Later, Jimmy hears of Sean's injury, and visits him at the hospital. Sean tells Jimmy that they caught the killer and the two have roughly the same conversation they did in the real movie in the middle of the street. Sean (clearly fading out) says to Jimmy (who sobs realizing what he has done to innocent Dave) "Sometimes I feel like we all got in the back of that car that day", a great line in the movie. Sean dies in front of Jimmy. The movie profiles Jimmy going home, doing his business, and in this horrifying, almost-Shakespearean tragedy of an ending, Jimmy kills himself in some way, ending the life of the last of the three boys that were affected that fateful day in the opening scene. Who agrees with this ?
This movie would have been a beautiful movie if it had any other end than it did. It was, however, ruined and therefore I only give it a 5.