Belfast (2021)......Rest easy, we're not about to start some in-depth review of a film that thousands of critics and blogger already weighed in on.......
.......sure, we liked it well enough, this meticulous black-and-white auto-biographical story of writer-director Kenneth Branagh's childhood in strife torn Ireland of the late 1960's.
Vividly rendered trip into another era with a stellar ensemble cast......
Branagh's intention here is to pluck your heartstrings like a frenzied harpist, and he more or less gets the job done until he blows the ending.
How so?
Let's talk alternate ending.......who can possibly count how many of those we've sat through on the 'special features or 'extra' of DVDs and Blu-Rays.
99 per cent of the time, you've no trouble understanding why these scenes ended up as "alternates"......for one reason or another, they didn't stick the landing. Or they just plain sucked compared to the final scene actually used.
But not this time.
"Belfast"s alternate ending struck us as infinitely better than the downbeat, abrupt closing scene that Branagh chose to wrap things up.
The alternate, corny and obvious as it was (looking like something you might see at the climax of a 1940's Hollywood movie), seemed to us perfectly in synch with film's overall structure.....in which current-day full color scenes of Belfast were used as bookends to the main monochrome visuals.
We'll even go so far as to say that Branagh's rejection of this ending robbed the film of the heartbreaking, nostalgic power it was aiming for.......and greatly lessened its chances as the film entered the last Awards season.
Anyway, that's our opinion on this one and we'll stand by it. With the ending as it stands, we'll give "Belfast" 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2). ......if the alternate had been used instead, there's no way we would've given it anything less than 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
Remind us to keep checking out those alternate endings......
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