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Truly Dreadful Film

Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie of this year hands down!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit, set in two time zones and countries with a more than decent cast. There's mystery, a heartbreaking romance, and an exciting (yet convenient) conclusion in Ireland.The story flips fairly seamlessly between 1991 and 1943, starting with the passing of World War II veteran Chuck Harris. His wife (Shirley MacLaine) refuses to grieve, numbing herself with alcohol and lashing out at her daughter (Neve Campbell) and lifelong friend (Christopher Plummer).Through a series of flashbacks where Shirley becomes (Mischa Barton), we learn that Chuck wasn't her first love and that her heart belonged to Teddy (Stephen Amell) who never returned from WW2. We also see Belfast in 1991 where (Pete Postlethwaite) - love him and young Jimmy are digging on a mountainside finding bits of pieces from a downed B-17 bomber, eventually they discover a ring inscribed from Teddy to Ethel and after tracking down its history a mystery nearly five decades in the making slowly comes into focus.The story is very good story but a bit all over the place where the characters emotions are concerned, which are over the top at times and mean without reason. Shirley is especially nasty to her daughter but even Plummer has his moments.The acting was fantastic though, the flashbacks well done, I was surprised to see Stephen Amell's 'Arrow' in an early role. The story in Ireland was more involved than I thought it would be including gangsters and IRA bombings. I enjoyed Martin McCann as young Jimmy and the inclusion of the hawk to tie it all together. Sad. 11/8/15

Recap: A funeral of an old war veteran once again unites his friends. Now only two of them remain, the widow Ethel Ann and her friend Jack. They reminisce about times before the war, when Chuck and Teddy still lived. Times were good, and Ethel Ann were very much in love with Teddy, so much they actually married in secret. But their future didn't become as it was supposed to. Ethel Ann's husband just buried wasn't Teddy, but Chuck. And only Jack and Ethel Ann, not even Ethel Ann's own daughter, know the true love story. But far away, on an hill in Belfast, a young kid finds a ring, Ethel's and Teddy's secret wedding ring, and the secret is slowly revealed. But pain buried for half a century doesn't go easy.Comments: Not sure what Attenborough and Woodward wanted with this movie. It is a good story, also supposedly inspired by a true event, with a lot of different parts, each contributing to slowly unfold the secret. But there is two problems, the secret is revealed almost immediately, and with so much to tell, from different times and different places, the movie has no time to really explore any part in depth. It becomes shallow. And despite credited as a romance, I didn't find it very romantic. There certainly is no happy love left, and more problematic, it is forced to be too shallow to bring forward any real emotions. All that is left is an OK drama about how young people were affected by the war, and that not every story was a happy one. It makes for an average movie, nothing more.As this is written, 5 of the 7 keywords of the movie are relating to female nudity. It seems wrong when those relate to just one brief scene, that is rather unnecessary too. This is not a movie with much nudity. It is not sensual in any part, there are barely emotions. It is best described as a war drama, with all that it entails.5/10

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.

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.