User Reviews

Never make promises you can't fulfill, otherwise you'll find that nagging feeling coming back to haunt you, and it can be quite uncomfortable, unless of course it doesn't bother you as far as integrity and trustworthiness are concerned. Then again there's the living a lie, of not being true to yourself, which sometimes can be tricky when it deals with affairs of the heart, where ignorance may be bliss.

Closing the Ring throws its hat into the WWII era inspired romance stories, where boys turn into men, and have to leave their lady love behind at home while they ship off to the warfront. With events that unfold across two different continents, and unfolding between two different timelines with the necessary flash backs, flash forwards, and nicely edited transitions, the movie isn't that bad although the story might be at times clichéd.

Jack (Gregory Smith), Chuck (David Alpay) and Teddy (Stephen Amell) are three buddies who join the air force, and are training to be pilots, navigators and gunners, whatever it takes to bring them to the skies. Mischa Barton stars as young Ethel Ann who's the flower amongst the group, but only having romantic feelings for Teddy, whom she married in secret before the trio got shipped away to join the war.

That's the arc of the past, where we see how their relationship with one another hold up during mankind's darkest hour. The arc of the present has Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer take up the senior roles of Ethel Ann and Jack respectively, and on the other side of the continent in Northern Ireland, we follow Michael Quinlan (Pete Postlethwaite) and Jimmy Reilly (Martin McCann), where the latter is a simple minded teen helping the former fireman dig around Black Mountain in search of something of value.

I guess by now you can piece together a little bit of what could possibly happen, and added to the fray is the IRA's struggle for independence in 1991. Characters interact by crossing continents, mysteries and confirmation of what happened during those faithful and pivotal moments in WWII get revealed and explained, and feelings slowly get revealed, demolishing some long held denial and unawareness. Although given what would transpire, you wonder if it's remotely possible to pine for someone for so long, or to lock away your heart so cruelly that you shut off affections even for your own child.

It's still an enjoyable movie, though not exactly a great one but it does get to its point quickly. You might find yourself being a step ahead of the characters and piece together all the information provided way in advance, but still, if you'd enjoyed movies like Atonement and Evening, then you wouldn't find this that bad at all. Oh, and the English subtitles did help in deciphering some thick Irish accent.

I must hand it to Lord Attenborough who is attempting a chick flick to keep up with the times. Can anyone else attract the level of talent in the film: Christopher Plummer, Shirley Maclaine, Neve Campbell, Mischa Barton? The story has great promise. It opens with the funeral of a young woman's beloved daughter who is delivering her eulogy to a church full of veterans who knew and loved her father. Her mother, on the other hand, is sitting out on the church porch, smoking and nursing a hangover.

What develops from this story shows us a time when this mother was young, lively, and optimistic. She is in love with a young farmer who must go off to war. They always go out with two friends who are the best buds a guy could have.

The movie is also interspersed with a story that takes place in Belfast. You know that at some point, the film will have to knit these two elements together. There are numerous light moments to offset the darker experiences of love and loss during war. Ethel Ann (Maclaine)has loved well and was always loved but she is too self-involved to understand that she has used her own tragedies to punctuate her relationship with her daughter (Campbell).

Some of the younger actors in this are Canadian talent. I hope that this film gives them the exposure that they need to continue making their way up the talent ladder. David Alpay from Slings and Arrows is terrific as is Allan Hawco. I wanted to see more of them and less of Mischa Barton whose acting is wooden at the best of times.

At the Toronto Film Festival screening yesterday, the projector had a hiccup during the sow. Stephen Amell who plays Teddy got onto the stage and had an impromptu Q&A to save the day. It was fascinating to hear how he was cast and what kind of experience an actor has when they work with Richard Attenborough.

I don't usually like movies or books that go back and forth constantly between the past and the present. I'm usually frustrated, lamenting over the lost art of a linear storyline. I'm glad I stuck it out and watched Closing the Ring; it was very entertaining.

The film starts at Shirley MacLaine's husband's funeral. Christopher Plummer sits outside with her during the service. Then, a flash to the past, with a young Shirley MacLaine surrounded by three adoring servicemen about to be shipped off to WW2. Which one is young Christopher Plummer? Which one is her husband? As the film continues, more mysteries are introduced. Neve Campbell can't understand her mother's attitude after her father's death. And in Ireland, Pete Postlethwaite is digging in a dangerous area, finding pieces of a wrecked WW2 airplane. Each flashback to the 1940s gives just one more piece to the ever-growing puzzle, and it keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. I kept pressing pause when I rented this movie with my mom to talk about what I thought would be revealed. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, and that made the plot even more entertaining.

Probably because one of the first movies I remember seeing Christopher Plummer in was The Lakehouse, I never found him to be a very likable guy. He was so convincingly cold, I had a hard time seeing him as anything else. However, in Closing the Ring, Christopher Plummer gives a very different performance. I'm going to have to rethink my impression of him. In one scene, he burst into tears so naturally, I wanted to reach through the screen and embrace him in a tight hug.

While the younger actors in the movie aren't going to be nominated for Oscars anytime soon, the older folks make up for it. Shirley MacLaine looks beautiful, so if you're one of her fans, don't miss this one! And if you like WW2 movies, or movies that flash back and forth with a little mystery, you'll love it.

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'd never heard of this movie and, judging from the number of votes and comments it has received, not many other people have either - which is something of a surprise when you consider the cast and director. But then again, when you consider the lazy - and overly-convoluted - nature of the old-fashioned storyline, perhaps the reason nobody has heard of it is that the makers let it go with as little fuss as possible - the way you would a family relative with no chance of waking from a machine-maintained coma.

The film flashes back and forth between the 1940s and the early 90s. Director Attenborough misses no opportunity to demonstrate the inescapable ties of fate that connect the present and the past: doorbells ringing in 1991 and being answered in 1943, that kind of thing. It's a neat enough trick when performed once in a film, but when its done a dozen or more times it just grows tiresome, like a teacher who only knows how to teach by repeating the same learning phrase ad nauseum until it sinks in with even the thickest member of his class. The mystery of why Shirley Maclaine's Ethel-Ann acts so strangely after the death of her long-time husband unfolds so slowly that you lose interest long before its ultimate resolution. Too many characters start coming across as too self-pitying and self-indulgent, while others, such as Martin McCann's Jimmy Reilly, simply aren't interesting enough too hold our attention.

In the end writer Peter Woodward struggles to close the ring without straining credibility, and simply leaves you wondering why you spent so long awaiting an outcome you half-suspected was on the horizon anyway. Undemanding women viewers looking for an old-fashioned, Mills and Boon romance reminiscent of the weepy melodramas of the 50s may find some pleasure in it, but others will be left disappointed

The story of love lost to death during the second world war will never be tiresome for anyone whose family was touched by the war. The question is, can writers and actors still make the story real? For those of us in the audience tonight at The Screening Room in Kingston, watching Closing the Ring, the answer was a very satisfying 'yes'. Young actors were able to create the unselfconscious optimism and sense of honour of their 1940s counterparts heading off to war; the older cast members knew exactly how to portray the knowledge, understanding, and forgiveness that the present-day characters had learnt from their wartime experience, and kept in with such punishing self-control. If you don't like this film, I suspect you're under thirty. I'd suggest you prepare to discover its truth, and its very fine acting, in your later age. And be thankful if you're not on the verge of great loss in your youth. But then our soldiers are fighting and dying overseas as I write; perhaps young Ethel Anns and Teddys are making promises to each other at this very moment. In that case, open yourself to the possibility that this story might be about to unfold in your own life, even as you reject its apparent unreality.

Last film maker Sir Richard Attenborough English major works such as Gandhi and bridge the distance and won two Oscars in 87 years still Namely making a film about a love square.? Film, went back (Flashback) 4 love relationship, including three sons and a daughter at the time of World War II narrative that Boys are sent to war and romance one of them with Ethel Ann (Mischa Barton) will lead to strange incidents. Movie film full of emotional moments, especially with the game is excellent cast includes Shirley MacLaine with her lovely Tiny eyes that still after 75 years, the camera itself is fascinating or play Mischa Barton at all, 22 young boys and does not seem quite the movie after this game and love relationship - emotional 4-player come on. Lord Richard Attenborough with mastery and skill of the Irish World War II is rebuilding While well-being and sense of passion and love to 50 years Present during and after the move. I'm no pro, but his film making style I love this movie.

Great filmmakers usually end their careers on a sour note and this is no exception; barring some inept future use of British lottery money it is unlikely that the knight Sir Richard (nay, call me LORD Richard) will get another 15 million pounds or so to blow again.

Pick your favorite: Henry Hathaway bowed out with SUPER DUDE (a blaxploitation film I had the privilege of viewing in Cleveland on a double bill at the Scrumpy Dump Theater (!) some 35 years ago; Billy Wilder ended with BUDDY BUDDY; William Wyler had THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES (on paper a step up from SUPER DUDE, but not by all that much); Frank Capra with POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES which he really hated, per his autobiography; Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (hardly up to his high standards); Otto Preminger had THE HUMAN FACTOR, which I (alone?) liked (I've been a rabid Nicol Williamson fan since seeing him at Stratford as one of the greatest Macbeths, opposite Helen Mirren) and which costarred Attenborough. Even Michael Powell, apart from a look-back docu, culminated his career with an innocuous but hardly impressive Children's Film Foundation effort THE BOY WHO TURNED YELLOW, which I watched once at MoMA for completeness. There are obvious exceptions: Joe Mankiewicz bowed out with SLEUTH, an estimable movie and David Lean's A PASSAGE TO India was a winner.

Per the particularly self-serving (and useless) "making of" featurette on the DVD release titled "Love, Loss & Life", CLOSING THE RING is the folly of several producers who fell in love with a first-timer's screenplay based on the actual finding of an old wedding ring in the Irish hills. The flimsy, yet convoluted, script got funding and, per the interviews, bowled over Attenborough, too. How audience members react, limited to video fans in the U.S. where the Weinsteins thought better of wasting money on a theatrical release, is an individual matter, but the tired blood on screen here is frankly an embarrassment.

Some cinematic lions, notably Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer, as well as from a more recent generation Brenda Fricker and Pete Postlethwaite, are matched against some young talent, but the performances are uniformly poor. Having seen all of Attenborough's theatrical releases in first-run I concede he is capable of very good (Gandhi) but when he is bad, he turns out execrable material, notably the insulting A CHORUS LINE adaptation. I enjoyed YOUNG WINSTON, but then again I liked NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA by Schaffner back then too -pageantry is easy to take. But when Richard tried a genre film MAGIC for Joseph E. Levine, after making A BRIDGE TOO FAR for that once-famous showman, mediocrity ruled -about 10 steps below no-budget maestro Lindsay Shonteff's DEVIL DOLL.

Despite the filmmakers' protests of how moving and inspirational this love story hit them, on the screen it is flat and dull. The young cast, led by Mischa Barton, gives paper-thin performances, and the attempt by Attenborough "to be hip" by having Barton nude a couple of times is beneath contempt. That's as old a ploy as THE YELLOW TEDDY BEARS, a well-meaning (and boring) British exploitation film from 1964 for which I saw a vintage U.S. coming attraction just this past weekend (resuscitated by Something Weird Video) in which extraneous nude scenes were added to release it stateside as GUTTER GIRLS. Now I might accuse the Weinsteins of such ploys, but for Richard to stoop that low -wow!

The back and forth plotting from 1941 (actually 1944 it turns out in the narrative later) and 1991 to shoehorn in the Irish Troubles is undigested screen writing of the worst order. Connections between the two are lame and all the "maybe" and suggestive material goes nowhere. For example, strident Neve Campbell (a performance worse even than her terrible effort in the Alan Rudolph dud about sex INTIMATE AFFAIRS) as Shirley's grown up daughter creates wonderment as to "who's her daddy" but it turns out to be strictly a red herring, time-wise. Ditto casting Fricker of all people as the old-age version of a W.W. II "tart" who slept with all the Yanks -this hook is dangled for the viewer and left unresolved. Postlethwaite is perhaps the best performer in this one, but his role is 100% functional, designed for a big "reveal" only.

I've never seen MacLaine so disinterested (and uninteresting) in a movie- she looks like she's playing under protest. The character of a woman who had basically three beaux but wasted her life attached to the dead one is admittedly unplayable but she doesn't even try. Plummer has more energy, perhaps he alone was given Geritol on the set, but this is a thankless assignment as the "good buddy" who never got the girl. The debuting young Irish thesp Martin McCann is insufferably cheery in what turns out to be the lead role, the boy who found "the ring". Closeups and other emphasis on the object make one think we are living in the shadow of Tolkien, but needless to say this totem is of zero importance.

CLOSING THE RING is so bad one is reminded of the late Frank Perry's disastrously soapy MOMMIE DEAREST and MONSIGNOR, for which a wonderful director ended up being the butt of catcalls from Midnight Movie audiences. Unfortunately, its plotting is too dull and execution too mediocre for this lame RING to end up with any such afterlife, avoiding even the pitiful fate of having Hedda Lettuce lead camp followers in weekly derision at my local Chelsea (NY division, not England) cinema.

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.

I liked this film.

The story is easy to follow, and interesting too. I had most of it figured out early on, but that didn't take away from the pleasure of watching it.

I have three complaints, but none of them really sink the film. (Sorry, I did like the film, but I'm much better at complaining, so that's what my review will be. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this film was a good feature, but SHOULD have been great). (1) The acting by the younger Canadian/US actors is abysmal. It's like they all thought they were auditioning for Scary Movie 25 and ended up acting in this. Fortunately the script is able to survive it. (2) The effects are also abysmal. After Lord of the Rings happened (half a decade prior) there was no longer any excuse for crappy CG effects. The rule is: if you can't make it real, don't show it at all. Fortunately the story also survives this, because it's not really about that. (3) The central character is totally unlikeable, young or old. And choosing easily-recognizable actors for that role didn't help. This is probably the one that keeps me from rating this higher.

Anyway, aside from that, it was an interesting and moving story, with good acting by the older set, and those playing Irish roles. The cinematography (aside from the CG) was also good.

The film has a good script (except for the romance in the past that has not been carefully developed) and two fantastic narrative branches: the elder friends during and after the burial, and the investigations and political complications in Belfast. There are also many regular actors who do a good job, and five great actors who perform very well: veterans Christopher Plummer, Shirley MacLaine, and Pete Postlethwaite, but also Martin McCann as Jimmy Riley and Gregory Smith as young Jack, both of them very charismatic. The problem is exactly that the past romance, which is in the core of the story, is damaged by the terrible performance of seriously uncharismatic and unskilled Canadian actor Stephen Amell (I am perplex whilt I write it for noticing thst he is the guy who portrays superhero Arrow in several TV shows!!!). The scenes with the young characters before and during World War were nice when he did not appear; besides the aforementioned Gregory Smith, Mischa Barton was a little charming and David Alpay convinced as the shy guy. Amell, however, was a disaster, and it impacted even more in the romance scenes, as he had no credible connection with Barton (though, I may admit that when she exposed her breasts it became much nicer... but only then). It is a shame, because the film would have been quite good, as it was in the other moments, if were not for so important scenes with Stephen Amell...

I saw this movie at the London Film Festival yesterday.It is an incredibly old fashioned piece of film-making that at times seems very contrived and manipulative,but it does contain genuine emotion and a story that keeps you watching from beginning to end.Some of the acting(especially from the 1941 period)is patchy,but in the 1991 period of the film,MacLaine is great,so is Postlewaite but the film is stolen by young Martin McCann as the naive Jimmy Reilly,who is responsible for piecing the lives together of the characters separated by time and oceans.After the showing,Lord Attenborough appeared for a short Q&A and gave us some insight into the making of the film and announced the film will receive it's premiere in Ireland and will be released nationwide on the 28th Dec.My guess is for anyone who has an elderly relative to catch up with over the Christmas period,and wants to take them out,then see this movie.They will love it and you might possibly get hooked.The audience yesterday obviously were.

It's 1991 Branagan, Michigan. Marie (Neve Campbell) is burying his dead father Chuck. Her mother Ethel Ann (Shirley MacLaine) is unmoved by his death and more concerned about Marie and her boyfriend Peter. She is comforted by Jack (Christopher Plummer). In Belfast, Quinlan (Pete Postlethwaite) and Jimmy Reilly are digging up the wreckage of a B-17. Jimmy finds a ring. Back in 1941 Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ethel Ann (Mischa Barton) is friends with Jack (Gregory Smith) and Chuck. Teddy Gordon (Stephen Amell) is building a house for her and she's in love. Jack, Chuck and Teddy are all going up in B-17.

The movie moves back and forth too much and too easily between the time periods in the beginning. The three plot lines don't mash together well. The modern day Irish story is stuck out in the middle of nowhere with its own world. Jimmy could have just showed up with the ring without Belfast. Richard Attenborough is going old school with this romance drama. There is something lacking in the 1941 story. The actors are probably not up to the same standard as their older self. Gregory Smith's little mustache is silly. David Alpay and Stephen Amell are lifeless. Mischa Barton tries but she's too frail unlike the ballsy broad that is Shirley MacLaine. It's probably asking too much for the two young actors to try to be MacLaine and Christopher Plummer. Those two elder statesmen exude real acting power. Their section with Neve Campbell is a great little indie.

First the story it is not bad, it's just predictable and not very challenging, it seems like the author copy past some winning formula but didn't knew what to do with it.

You can clearly guess the ending from 30 minutes into the movie... it's that badly written, and it's to much to believe in... there is just to much corny sap girl appealing stuff in just one movie.

The young actors are really bad, and the old ones are really good. Overall it fails once again.

There are worst films, but there are much better ones, thank god.

Mischa Barton naked saved this mediocre movie... YES!

First of all, this didn't deserve the straight to DVD treatment it received for the U.S. It's not perfect by any means, but it's an experience that should have been seen on the big screen. No, it's not action packed, but it's beautiful to watch. It's a romance with dimensions that work very well, and oddly enough I wasn't one step ahead of it the whole way through. Some elements are always a bit predictable for a film like this, but I wasn't always entirely sure where it was heading next. This could have gotten a solid score of 10 had it not been for several severe flaws. The biggest of which is the actor playing Teddy. Now imagine The Notebook if Ryan Gosling was an awful actor, it would have destroyed the movie. Luckily, as important as the Teddy character is, he's not in a massive part of the film, and it's easy to imagine what the character should have been, and believe the key romance behind the film. Mischa worked for me for the most part, although she had a majority of her scenes with the lifeless Teddy character. McClain and Plummer were amazing as they usually always are. Campbell did a believable effort as the daughter lost behind all the secrets, and I loved the actors who played the young friends of Teddy. Lastly, in the end we are treated with one of the most beautiful film songs in years. Watch the credits, you'll here the amazing Lost Without Your Love, which will complete your experience with this flawed but wonderful film.

Closing the Ring features complex and scintillating performances from Shirley MacLaine (as Ethel Ann), Christopher Plummer (As Jack) with solid support by veterans such as the late great Peter Postlethwaite and Brenda Fricker. Neve Campbell in a sort of third lead is also terrific as the daughter who is frustrated and nonplussed over being shut out by her mother.

As you might expect, the young people in this film get a bit more of the screen time (although not nearly as skewed as usual - see The Debt, etc.). Mischa Barton as the young, high-spirited, and willful Ethel Ann, supplies the energy and marvelous acting to make these segments work along with the chemistry with the young man playing Teddy (her soul- mate). For me, the other young actors in these segments, the fellow who played Chuck (Arnell) was supposed to be sturdy but quiet; he was quiet but the sturdy art was never reflected by the actor - he just seemed pathetic. Gregory Smith who played young Jack, had lots of personality and complexity, but there is no way that person grows up physically or emotionally to be Christopher Plummer's Jack. On the other side of the pond, the young actors playing tartly Eleanor (later Fricker) and callow young Quinlan (later Postlethwaite) were perfectly cast and acted in their tiny roles. The head-turning performance to me was by the irrepressible Jimmy (Martin McCann) who took the role of the romantic and impetuous naif far beyond the script in his mannerisms and energy.

Overall, this is a bit overlong with some unnecessary sequences and a bit too much melancholia. But, that's my opinion and mostly nitpicking. If you like epic WWII romances and as a romantic love to say their present-day resolutions, this movie is well worth your time.