Why not just let tell the truth that the little sister shot him? She was 5, which means there's zero chance she gets punished. They'd probably just get her some counseling to deal with that trauma she definitely still had as an adult.
shareI have not seen this yet and do not particularly care to, but you might want to Spoiler Alert this.
So that's why she went to prison? She took the fall for a 5 year-old? Totally stupid move! You're right. A five year-old wouldn't get anything but counseling. The Bullock character wasted her life.
The topic has "(spoiler)" in it. If anyone still clicks on it, it's 100% on them.
shareI came to post the same thing. She took herself out of sister's life and destroyed her own life. Think it would have been better for her sister to get help right away. The older sister still might have gotten some jail time for leaving the gun laying there though.
shareI agree. Plus not telling did more harm to her sister than good. She blocked things out and didn’t understand. A child of 5 is old enough to understand death. Somewhere inside her she knew what she did.
shareYeah it didn't make a lot of sense covering it up. Maybe no one would have believed her, but that's better than lying about it. In the end it may have worked out better for everyone - telling the truth that is.
share
I think Ruth was trying to protect her sister from the knowledge and the reputation of growing up as a cop killer. Katie immediately blocked the incident out, and I believe Ruth wanted to preserve it that way.
Exatera, although it’s a decent way to rationalize it, I still can’t shake the feeling that it felt silly for Ruth to sacrifice 2 decades of her life for a circumstance that could have easily been explained with “5-year old didn’t know what she was doing”.
It’s just not a situation where that girl would have grown up with “cop killer” written on her forehead. Her name would have never been released because of her age.
I don't disagree, but then if Katie was forced to remember it she would have grown up with the trauma of having killed somebody at such a young age.
This way she just had some occasional flashes of this and that, but didn't really remember anything at all from that time, including Ruth.
That didn’t work for me. Doesn’t make much sense and more critically destroys the movie’s fundamental premise of forgiveness.
While on the subject, the calm, rational sheriff’s son suddenly left-turning into revenge killer of an innocent daughter left me with wtf overload. Didn’t see that coming either because it also makes no sense.
Shame because outside of those flaws it’s Best Picture worthy.
I think we are supposed to believe that discovering his wife with his brother totally unhinged him.
Although honestly it didn't look to me like he loved her anyway. [shrug] I mean, from what 5 seconds we saw them on the screen together.
He came up with the plan BEFORE he caught his wife in bed with his brother.
Initially his brother wanted to beat up or possibly even kill the Sandra Bullock character, and he was strongly against it.
Then he talked to her and because she said "Life goes on" he suddenly changed his mind. He wasn't willing to hurt a guilty (in his view) person before, but now he is perfectly happy to KILL a completely innocent person for revenge. Makes very little sense.