Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

antoniotierno This wasn't a successful movie at all. A love story aimed at an older audience, the kind of movie watchers preferring exposition to explosions. It can be defined a quality World War II drama that deserves to be more just another TV broadcast. The promise is the kind that might seem overly melodramatic if heard in a movie set in contemporary times but it is at home with the wartime realities so effectively rendered in Closing the Ring. Attenborough is a past master at this type of drama and shifts a lot between the decades, avoiding the confusion so common to non-linear films like this. The resemblance between the younger and older actors isn't striking, but their performances make this a minor issue.

Maddyclassicfilms Directed by Richard Attenborough,this 2007 tale of loss and friendship is touching and boasts a fine cast. Sadly there's not a lot else making this worth a look.Belfast,Ireland 1991,on a hill two men find the wreckage of a crashed World War Two American bomber plane and the elder of the two,Quinlan(Pete Postlethwaite)remembers the event and not being able to help the airmen involved.They also discover an inscribed ring which the younger man,Jimmy(Martin McCann)decides to return to the wife of the dead crew member.Branagan,Michigan,1991,Ethel Ann(Shirley MacLaine)and her best friend Jack(Christopher Plummer)attend the funeral of Ethel's husband Chuck,a former US airman.Her daughter Marie(Neve Campbell)is devastated by the loss,however Ethel doesn't seem so saddened.She and Jack know that she really loved someone else all these years.During the war the young Ethel(Mischa Barton)was married to airman Teddy Gordon(Stephen Amell)and along with Chuck(David Alpay)and Jack(Gregory Smith)the four were an inseparable group.However when Teddy was shot down and killed,Ethel shut down emotionally and later she married Chuck with Jack left on the sidelines also in love with her.So we've got the war,a love affair striving to overcome big challenges,and some IRA action thrown in as well.Sadly not even Richard Attenborough or his cast can disguise the fact that this is afternoon movie material,with an extra slice of cheese on top.While MacLaine,Plummer and Campbell are superb the script is riddled with clichés and you'll see where it's going ages before it's over. It is enjoyable thanks to the cast just don't expect too much from this and you may enjoy it.

hall895 Closing the Ring opens in a small Michigan town in 1991 with the funeral of a World War II veteran. The dearly departed man's daughter delivers a poignant eulogy to a church full of veterans. It is obvious that this man was rather beloved. But curiously the wife of the deceased seems not at all interested in the proceedings. She's not even in the church, rather sitting outside smoking a cigarette. When offered condolences she acknowledges that her husband was a good man. But she says she won't miss him. She appears to be not the slightest bit bereaved, content to sit there and wait for them to wheel her dead husband out. Obviously there is something going on here that we're not aware of. And we spend the rest of the film jumping back and forth across fifty years of time and across an ocean as long-buried secrets are revealed and everything becomes clear.The newly widowed woman we meet in the opening scene is Ethel Ann. And after the funeral we are transported back to a much happier time. It's 1941 and young Ethel Ann is in love with a young farmer named Teddy. Complicating matters is the fact that Teddy's not the only one who loves the beautiful, vibrant Ethel Ann. His two close friends Jack and Chuck have a thing for her as well. But she's Teddy's girl. Everybody knows that, everybody accepts that. So Teddy and Ethel Ann should be destined to live happily ever after. But Teddy, Jack and Chuck will soon be going off to war. And lives will be changed. We begin to understand how the young Ethel Ann, so full of life, could become the old Ethel Ann, utterly defeated by life, whom we saw in the film's beginning.The story constantly jumps back and forth in time from the 1940s to 1991. And it also jumps back and forth between Michigan and Northern Ireland. It is in Belfast in 1991, set against the backdrop of the IRA blowing things up, where the second key strand of the plot unfolds. An old man named Quinlan and a naive young teen named Jimmy dig up the wreckage of a B-17 which crashed there decades ago during the war. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Teddy/Ethel Ann story and the Quinlan/Jimmy story are somehow intertwined. With all the skipping around in time and place the movie does have a bit of a challenge sustaining its momentum. It's a movie of fits and starts. But ultimately it works.The movie is helped by a generally excellent cast. Shirley MacLaine, playing the older version of Ethel Ann, and Christopher Plummer, portraying the one character who knows Ethel Ann's secrets, are nominally the leads and they're quite good in their roles. But it's really more of an ensemble piece. Mischa Barton as the young Ethel Ann makes a very good impression. Neve Campbell as Ethel Ann's daughter and Pete Postlethwaite as old Quinlan are good as well. And Martin McCann captures Jimmy's wide-eyed naiveté perfectly. Stephen Amell seems a little forced and unnatural in playing the young Teddy but that's the only minor quibble with the cast.The story is a good one, very sentimental and told in a unique way. You get the sense the movie would benefit from a second viewing. Once you have all the times and places sorted out in your head you could probably appreciate the story even more. As it is, on a first run through, the story is a little confusing at times. There's a lot going on, at times maybe a little bit too much. Did we really need the IRA storyline for example? In the end I guess that plot point serves its purpose in helping the story to get itself to the finish line. But along the way it slows things down and adds another layer of confusion to the mix. In the end though all's well that ends well. Everything does finally come together well enough to make this an ultimately satisfying movie, an overlooked little gem.

Eva-Stina Nordkvist I stumbled across this movie when I was searching for movies with Shirley MacLaine. I thought the story sounded OK, but I can't say that my expectations were that great. I usually have problems with sitting still when watching a movie, I often tend to pause and go do other stuff. This time I watched the whole thing at once.I loved this story from beginning to end, because you never really had a clue what really happened or why it happened. I usually don't like movies about the war, but this one wasn't so much about the war as it was about the people involved. When Ethel's heart ached, my heart ached. I haven't found my true love yet, but I can imagine the pain of being parted from the one you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with. If I could have the love that she had for just a second I would be a happy, happy woman. Chick-flick? No, I think everybody can find something in this movie. I definitely learned a lesson. Life is too short to not let things go.