But ultimately, it’s about Jimmy Keene’s desperation to help the girls’ families Larry murdered. In other words, his discovery of a cause much bigger and more morally meaningful than his own freedom should his mission succeed. That’s why he could no longer sit there and listen as Larry detailed his crimes and gleefully anticipated his own likely release. That’s what made him blow up at Larry, what made him scream for the doctor or the warden or the FBI, what drove him to repeatedly infuriate his guards despite the punishments they doled out to him, what caused him to scrawl all over the cell walls in his own blood like a madman, what made him cry and feel like a failure even after McCauley tells him he’s nailed Larry. Even after he’s free, the judge commutes his sentence while wondering aloud where Jimmy’s overwhelming sense of entitlement went while in that “hell” he went to.
Those girls, their lives, their deaths, the love their families felt for them, and the love they felt for their families: These things are real to Jimmy in a way nothing else, not even his own plight, is.
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