(spoilers) Dilemma of the final scene's cut-off

re: the unresolved closing scene-- Jesus pretty much has to reveal the treacherous wife's role in the scam to his bosses (and, by extension, the rich abductee Cole), right? Although it would appear all the other conspirators are dead, and she certainly has no incentive to confess, realistically it's inevitable since she lacks the industrial-chemical amnesia excuse and her shaky cooperation with the cops is going to be questioned eventually, unless they're incompetent. Not to mention, that'd be a sorry way to treat his new blood-brother Mr. Rich Guy, letting him go back with his kidnap-happy cheating spouse as if nothing had happened...

Or this was my first reaction, trying to put together the logical outcome from the unloading of the "twist" info in the flashbacks. It's just the last in a long line of plot wallops -- unless there's another way to look at it: the operative/wife collusion was a deeper plot in parallel with the gang's ransom scheme, and furthermore he instigated & dragged her into it. This brings on some complexity about whether he was pursuing the affair more than his undercover assignment as well; possibly he'd fallen deep enough into the former role to jettison the latter. Then he'd be the one with the strong disincentive to tell the truth. Except now thanks to the warehouse memory-gas mix-up and a few lucky breaks in (one of) the kidnap victims' favor, he actually has the chance to start over or at least retrace his fate, keeping nicely with the movie's whole clean-slate theme (and the one hitch, maybe shared by the wife, of thinking how things might have been).

After initially being annoyed at it I reconsidered the abrupt sudden ending as a pretty elegant gimmick; unlike "Memento," which bombards you with a discouraging left-field revelation that renders the preceding drama pointless, the circular non-heroic ending of "Unknown" leaves off at a new choice or inflection point, instead of settling the main plot completely. Even if you discount the flashback overload and prefer the straight-arrow undercover reading, it's still quite effective and poignant as a moral flourish, i.e. it sinks in that he's basically responsible for the whole mess that just went down.