The Monuments Men

George Clooney writes, directs, produces, and stars in a true story about the world’s biggest treasure hunt in the action-biography, Monuments Men.  During World War II, the Nazis steal almost all of the artistic masterpieces in Europe only to begin to destroy them at the end of the war.  In an attempt to save the historical treasures, President Roosevelt sends a group of men led by art conservationist, Frank Stokes (George Clooney) behind enemy lines to stop the Germans and recover the stolen items.

Stokes recruits the help of art curator James Granger (Matt Damon), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), French designer Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Gujargin) and theater director Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban) and after a short boot camp, takes them to Germany.  While most of the squad is looking for Michaelangelo’s Madonna and the Ghent Altarpiece to name a few, Granger goes to France to look for more German hiding places from a French Museum curator named Claire Simone (Kate Blanchett).  With the war coming to an end in 1944, it’s a race between the art recovery unit and the Germans to either save or destroy the treasure.  This film has a little bit of everything: humor, action and drama.  It also has little character development, underdeveloped material, and even a smaller amount of passion from the script.  I think George Clooney does a fine job wearing all of the hats, but he needed several other pairs of eyes checking and rechecking the script and making decisions.  (I could have loaned him my eyes; it couldn’t have been worse.)  This film was originally supposed to open November or December 2014 but they decided to wait till award season was over.  (Hey, George Clooney did make a great decision there)  I thought the entire cast was fantastic, but they just didn’t have good material to pull from.  If only we could have had some feelings for the characters or for the treasure.  (I was more interested in my popcorn.) This film missed a lot of great opportunities but it was still okay and I’m giving it a C+ rating.

This movie has been given a PG13 rating by the MPAA