'You could have saved him'

Alistair Little (Liam Neeson), when they were filming and Joe was upstairs, did say if he had known it was his brother, he would've killed him too. So the boys mother would've lost both sons.

It wasn't made up. The part where we see James Nesbitt (for the 1st time) in the car, his words are Joe's words. And the part where Liam Neeson is being filmed are Alistair's own words. The writer tweaked them a bit in places to make the words flow better as dialogue in a script.
I think 'justification' is the wrong choice of word as I there is no justification in Joe's mother blaming him. He didn't kill his brother. He couldn't have done anything to stop Alistair. And if he did, his mother would've lost two sons. As I said, those really were Alistair's own words and he said if he had known that the boy was the brother, he would've killed him too.

My take on it is that her mother felt helpless and did not have the courage to face the truth that she had to put the blame on Joe. People tend to hurt the ones they love.

Well, the older brother wasn't even aware that the killer was outside. But Joe did.

I think you're all trying to understand the mother through movie characterisation logic. The fact is people are more unpredictable than cinema would like us to think. I don't doubt people Joe's mother exist and have blamed their children for the death of others.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

I thought this was very unrealistic. A mother would never do that, she'd be thrilled her young son was alive and worried about what he'd seen. I found the movie less interesting after that because it was so unrealistic.

Good post, Mico. I thought her blaming the son out of anger was very realistic. It's just unfortunate someone that young can't understand and it ends up haunting them for the rest of their life.


"When people do not have a past, they must create myths to supplement the facts of their existence"

Mico, your post sums up exactly how I was interpreting this. It was an irrational response to an irrational situation. I think too, that a lot of what we see is Joe's prespective fed by his own guilt and interpretation of his mother's reaction. She was obviously distraught and put blame against Joe but that burden has obviously been eating at him for most of his life and would have become exaggerated beyond what it might have really been.

People handle grief differently, especially the grief of losing a child. I am not a psychologist, but I am guessing that this mom had some guilt that she was not home to protect her son (not that there's anything she could have done). Since she was not willing to face those feelings of guilt, she had to look for some other source of irrational blame, that of expecting her 11 yr old son to prevent a drive-by shooting. I agree that if she later came to terms with this just being one of those sh^tty things that happen in life, she likely would not have had the nerve to tell her son she was sorry for laying this mind job on her son.

Since the script was written straight from hours of interviews with Alistair Little and Joe Griffin, I think it is safe to say that it was Joe Griffin's impression that his mother told him many times, at least while he was growing up, that it was all his fault that his brother was dead. It does not appear that she did anything at any time to alter this verbal castigation, since he makes some comment about having to hear it from her for 33 years (or something to that extent). I also agree that children can carry the things their parents say to them when young with them a long time, even into adulthood.