10 "Ambiguous" Movie Endings (That Totally Aren't)

Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning masterpiece Mystic River concludes with Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) killing his childhood friend Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) under the vengeance-fuelled belief that he murdered his daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum).

But as it turns out, Dave didn't kill Katie - she instead died in a prank gone wrong, and so Dave's death was ultimately for nothing.

In the final scene, Jimmy's detective friend Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), having realised what Jimmy did, eyeballs him across the street during a parade, before pointing at him with a "finger gun" motion, while Jimmy effectively shrugs it off.

Some believe the scene to be vague about Sean's intentions, that his hand gesture perhaps implies that he's letting Jimmy go and won't follow up on his murderous act.

Yet that's very clearly the exact opposite of what's going on. Sean's clearly indicating that he's got Jimmy in his crosshairs and is going to pursue him from this point on.

Whether he succeeds or not, of course, is another matter altogether, but this ending is so much simpler than folks make it out to be.