Sorry, but the choice Gere's character makes at the end is pretty dumb. He'd rather be known as a man he wasn't who was a murderer (killing that unarmed guy at a saloon for cheating in a card game) than a guy who he is who was once a thieving scumbag but redeemed himself through love? And *die* to be known as that person? Dumb.
shareI think you missed the whole point, just like laurel did when she attempted to prove his real identity. He didn't PREFER to be a murderer, he preferred the identity that would allow the town's folk to retain the land that they all worked so hard to make something out of. He was willing to sacrifice himself for those people, laurel, and "their" children.
Besides, if jack was proven to be horace, and he was released, another court would have arrested him on the grounds that he was a liar and a thief. That court would NOT have released him on the grounds that he had found love, impersonating a dead man. He would have gone to prison and possibly died for his actual crimes.
He would have died either way, and dying for a cause he believed in, for people that respected him, made more sense than dying without any honor or legacy whatsoever.
Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.
-- Marshall McLuhan
The movie plainly reveals several reasons why he didn't want to tell the truth that he wasn't really Jack Sommersby: (1.) The freed blacks and others who bought & farmed parts of his land would lose it; (2.) his wife & daughter would be condemned as an adulteress and a bastard child respectively; and (3.) he "buried" Horace Townsend forever when he buried the real Jack Sommersby; he wasn't willing to "resurrect" that wicked loser, even at the cost of his life.
I like the additional reason supplied by poster Only_Pandoras:
If jack was proven to be Horace, and was released, another court would have arrested him on the grounds that he was a liar, an imposter and a thief. That court would NOT have released him on the grounds that he had found love and done charitable things while impersonating a dead man. He would have gone to prison and possibly even died for his actual crimes.
So dying for a cause he believed in, for people who respected him, made more sense than dying without any honor or legacy whatsoever.
My 175 (or so) Favorite Movies:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070122364/