The Finger - Spoilers May Lurk Within

Winstone's right hand holding the pipe is missing a finger.

yeh big ray chopped off his own digit and passed it off as his friends to save the guy. if anyone else had done that id feel it was unrealistic but winstone does have a real earthy toughness that makes me think he really could in a drastic situation cut off his own finger without crying out and remain cool and keep it together soon after and keep acting and thinking clearly. it also kind of worked out nicely in that supposedly you cut off somebodies trigger finger to make sure they can never take life again. so it kind of rounded things off nicely. he has saved his friend not only on that day but forever more. if they do catch him they believe he has no finger and this is the days before photographs so they will also think they caught the wrong guy. also there werent many boers going round new zealand cutting index fingers off so little risk of the wrong man getting punished. but even more it kind of shows that winstone's character who was a rather vicious chap has forgiven himself and is seeking redemption and turned his back on violence. he is at peace, he can not shoot a gun again and is something you do to people you respect to save them from having to ruin their soul by killing people they have no business killing even if its an order etc so he has kind of saved himself and forgiven himself after his thing of putting out his bible and photograph by the fire and praying for the first time in a long time as the maori performed his ceremonial rites in the cave. so usually id feel it was a silly unbelievable thing to do but in this it works very well and i can believe big ray being able to do it and remain calm.