Closing the Ring (2007)

The Worst Film Ever

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

a love story. or only a war story. in fact, both. not as two parts of a single story but as mixed sides. because its virtue is to be an old fashion story. comfortable in a specific way. seductive in each aspect. it is one of films who gives the flavor and the colors of a world. in delicate and touching manner. one of many stories about her and him, about the other, about the unexpected event and about the truth as a fragile building, after decades. and this does "Closing the Ring" more than a Hallmark film. but a sort o rediscover of personal memories about similar facts and meets and decisions.

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.

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.

I really wanted to like this movie, which I saw on video recently, several years after its theatrical release. I'm a sucker for a romance, but even I found this overly sentimental. I thought the acting was terrific and the casting was genius - having Christopher Plummer and Shirley McLaine played as youngsters by Gregory Smith (from Everwood) and Misha Barton improved the somewhat uneven movie and made it more watchable than it would have been. I liked the way the mystery played out - I liked that the audience had to piece things together. But once you knew what had happened, it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. I also found the IRA violence in the modern story strange and out of place - sort of confusing and unnecessary in a movie that was already fairly complicated. Overall it was a pretty affecting romance and family drama about love and forgiveness and all that good stuff, but not quite as good as it could have been.