I just saw the movie and I liked it a lot. Something wasn't clear for me at the end. The wife of the police officer tried to kill herself but was prevented by someone. Does this mean that she will have to confess to perjury and go to jail? It wasn't clear what happens to her and her police husband. Anyone, please?
The obscure we see eventually, the obvious takes a little longer.
Davidson, the audience have known from the start, did not kill Boyd and was innocent. What put him away for 12 years was the lies in court of the dense boxer Pewsey and the femme fatale Fay. At the end, the police learn that Boyd had been alive all along under the false name of Berry.
Since Davidson could not have murdered him, the original trial was a fraud and everything the witnesses said, true or false, was wasted breath. The least the law can do is to give Davidson a large sum for wrongful imprisonment.
What will need explaining however is a dead man with a used handgun (Boyd alias Berry) and a wounded man (Davidson), seen by two independent witnesses (the journalist Craig and the refugee Ilse). Just a little accident on the marshes? Or could they lay it on Boyd’s gay chauffeur?
Although the trial was all a wasted exercise, the witnesses still committed perjury and got an innocent man sent to prison for 12 years. So the following loose threads would need to be addressed:
1. Two witnesses conspiring to commit perjury
2. A senior police officer perverting the course of justice (by protecting his wife - understandable but still unlawful)
3. Mystery man on the marshes strolling away with a firearm having just shot another man.
4. Lies and obstruction by the creepy chauffeur
5. Journalist giving address of key witness to recently released "murderer"
I would imagine, especially in those days when police officers had to observe rules such as always wearing a hat in public*, on or off duty, questions would have been asked about a senior investigating officer striking up a relationship with the star witness in a murder trial.
*(I don't know when this rule was repealed, but it did exist, and others about who officers could and could not associate with, where they should live etc)
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.
Interesting points of view. I suppose the wife could say she was trying to protect her father who was an older person. Would that grant her some leniency? I don't know. I guess it is part of the movie to let the audience wonder the consequences for all involved.
Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.
It would definitely be entered on her behalf as mitigation, but when a man has served twelve years because of her lies, during which time her father died and she could have owned up, I doubt whether much time would be knocked off her sentence!
I didn't get too exercised about these "loopholes" - it was a very enjoyable movie and you tend to grant a lot of licence, eg the man with the gun at the end had done a good deed, so we don't clamour for his collar to be felt, it's just that in real life it would have been (nowadays he might even be shot himself!)
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.
She will receive a reduced sentence. Mills character states that 7 years is the max penalty but that she will get less. This is foreshadowing of what will happen to her.
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