VETERAN director Richard Attenborough's latest film is as solid and as reliably old-fashioned as the great old man of cinema himself.

Watch the trailer here

The 84-year-old's unusual movie about love and loss is set between 1941 and 1991, jumping between Michigan and Belfast, the Second World War and The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Featuring a decent cast who put in strong performances, the film tells the story of a World War II pilot who crash-lands in Belfast and asks a local to return his ring to his girlfriend in the US.

This is eventually done, but not before 25 years have elapsed.

Shirley MacLaine is in particularly fine form as the troubled American widow Ethel Ann who seems to love booze more than she loves her daughter (Neve Campbell).

Things change when her old friend, war veteran Jack (Christopher Plummer) comes back into her life.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Dublin, another strand of the story unfolds as the crusty character played by Pete Postlethwaite and his young friend unearth parts of a B-25 bomber that crashed there during the war.

It's a sentimental and often heavy film but some acting masterclasses just about manage to ensure this one doesn't get shot down in flames.