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Closing the Ring

Closing the Ring (2007)

September. 14,2007
|
6.5
|
R
| Drama Romance

During the 1940s, a group of young men go off to war, leaving behind Ethel Ann, who is in love with one of them, Teddy. In modern-day Belfast, a man named Jimmy endeavors to return a ring found in the wreckage of a crashed plane. He travels to Michigan, where the grown Ethel Ann, who married another man after Teddy was killed in battle, now lives. Ethel Ann must decide whether to go with Jimmy to meet the soldier who last saw Teddy alive.

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Reviews

Solemplex
2007/09/14

To me, this movie is perfection.

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StyleSk8r
2007/09/15

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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Mandeep Tyson
2007/09/16

The acting in this movie is really good.

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Francene Odetta
2007/09/17

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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GusF
2007/09/18

The final film directed by Richard Attenborough, this is far from his best work. His direction is good but is not up to the very high standard that he set for himself in his previous films. The biggest problem is with the subpar material. The script is written by Peter Woodward, probably best known for his role as Galen in the short-lived "Babylon 5" spin-off "Crusade", and it is riddled with clichés. Some things happen because it says so in the script rather than because it is a logical development. Much of the characters' behaviour does not ring - no pun intended - true. The love scenes are so badly written and relentlessly old fashioned with their unconvincing, over the top proclamations of love laced with foreshadowing of inevitable tragedy that it feels like a bad 1940s film. However, I would certainly not have minded it if felt like a good 1940s film. Don't get me wrong, I'm a very sentimental guy and I love a good romantic film. "Heaven Can Wait" (1943) and another Christopher Plummer film "Somewhere in Time" are my ninth and tenth favourite films respectively but this film is just badly written and variably acted, if well directed, schmaltz. The film is most notable as being Attenborough's final work in a hugely impressive career which stretched all the way back to "In Which We Serve" in 1942 and encompassed 66 films as an actor and 12 as a director, with "A Bridge Too Far" being the only one that fell into both categories.The best performance in the film certainly comes from the one and only Christopher Plummer, one of the best actors of his generation, as an elderly US Army Air Force veteran named Jack Etty who returns to his home town of Branagan, Michigan in 1991 to attend the funeral of one of his World War II flying buddies. He lifts the film really in a way that a lesser actor could not. Shirley MacLaine is rather good as his friend's widow Ethel Ann Harris, who rather than mourning her late husband Chuck spends most of her time drinking and reliving the memories of her first husband Teddy Gordon. He was killed in 1944 when his plane crashed in Belfast and she never got over it. I never got over the fact that I didn't care one way or the other since neither of them had much in the way of personality. Mischa Barton plays the young Ethel Ann and she's perfectly fine but fairly forgettable in the role. Stephen Amell's performance as Teddy is distractingly dreadful. Of the younger cast, the best actor is the ever likable Gregory Smith as, appropriately enough, the young Jack. As an added bonus, he even bears a passing resemblance to Plummer. The film also has nice performances from Brenda Fricker (even if she is far too young for her role), Pete Postlethwaite, Neve Campbell, Ian McElhinney and David Alpay.Another major problem with the script is that it is very badly structured. The 1940s flashbacks should have added to my understanding of the characters and made me care about them more rather than bore me. When the first scene set in Northern Ireland was accompanied by a poor imitation of Irish traditional music, I knew that I was in trouble. Sadly, the Belfast scenes get even more clichéd with respect to their depiction of both the people of Northern Ireland and the Troubles. The IRA subplot adds nothing to the film but running time and some good acting. An almost fatal problem with the film is that Ethel Ann is not a terribly likable character. Chuck was a nice, decent, reliable guy who was madly in love with her but she had no finer feeling for him whatsoever. Actually, she seemed fairly contemptuous of him. He may not have been the love of her life but he loved her, he took good care of her and he was the father of her daughter Marie. It would be a different matter entirely as if he had been abusive or neglectful. I can't say that I had any sympathy for her on that score. If she didn't love him which she clearly didn't, she shouldn't have married him. Her behaviour is disrespectful to his memory. To make matters worse, she starts a relationship with Jack mere months after Chuck's death. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.Overall, this is a very bad film which is thankfully only a minor footnote in the career of my favourite director of all time. It would have been nice if he had ended his career on a high note but his work speaks for itself. It is marginally better than Attenborough's worst film "A Chorus Line" and is saved from holding that dubious distinction by the virtue of some good acting, particularly from Plummer. Of the 12 films that he directed, those two are the only ways that I rated below 8/10. "A Bridge Too Far", "Shadowlands" and "Oh! What a Lovely War" are all in my Top 30. I'm sorry to have watched all of his films as I feel as if I have no more worlds to conquer. He was never the most prolific of directors but this is the only time that I have watched the entire filmography of a director which fell into double digits. Probably the best thing to come of this film outside of Plummer's performance is the fact that the younger actors can boast in decades to come that they worked with him, Attenborough and Shirley MacLaine, which will be nice for them.

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FletchGives
2007/09/19

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.

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voshdesigns
2007/09/20

I enjoyed this movie, but more towards the end. It seems like the beginning was just thrown together so quickly, the love story progressed so fast that for me I didn't believe they were in love or ever in love, but later in the movie you see the love stronger than for me it was in the beginning. It's sort of like okay you see us two or three times, now you are supposed to believe we are in love, and oh yes, and now let's get married and have babies?! I just didn't buy it.Other than that, the movie is really entertaining and sad at the same time. Just a few of the characters and their stories just for me were not fully put on the table, and issues not resolved, etc...

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TheEmulator23
2007/09/21

This is utter tripe. A complete waste of the superb cast. The fact Sir Richard Attenborough directed this makes it all the worse. The acting is good but the best actors in the world can't make a bad script a good film. It's long, drawn out, & flat out boring which is sad. It's a poor excuse for a movie. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unfortunately. This is actually worse than Sandra Bullock's terrible snooze-fest "Love & War." Stick to Attenborough's "Gandhi" (although it doesn't hold up too well today) & "Chaplin" for his best efforts. This is not one of them at all. This was unheard of for quite good reason. Skip this because you will forget it before it's even over.

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