Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission with the art trapped behind enemy lines and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell how could these guys - seven museum directors curators and art historians all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed But as the Monuments Men as they were called found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankinds greatest achievements. From director George Clooney the film stars George Clooney Matt Damon Bill Murray John Goodman Jean Dujardin Bob Balaban Hugh Bonneville and Cate Blanchett. The screenplay is by ...
Review
"The Monuments Men" is a group of men (in real life around 350 and in this film 7) who are tasked with saving the historically and culturally significant monuments fine arts and archives during World War II. They have to find and return that which the French hid and the Germans were finding and stealing and then hiding. And the film decided to tell this story comedically.
The film took a really long time to get going as they wanted it to be about the men that took on this task. But they changed their names and I also couldn't tell you a single characteristic of any of them. The men were paired off so they each had their own region to investigate but none of that was interesting. The worst part was giving James Granger (Matt Damon) and Claire Simon (Cate Blanchett representing the real life heroine Rose Valland) a love story. They did have a reason for such nonsense or how about just sticking with how it actually happened.
George Clooney has said the film is about 80% accurate and that seems fair enough. But the problem isn't the historical inaccuracy the problem is that the cheap humour diminishes the very people and story they're trying to empower. The humour was just a handful of lines wanting to kill Hitler and standing on a landmine. It just didn't make the film entertaining. The story could have done that but it didn't become interesting until they started discovering where the Germans hid the art. Coincidentally the same point when the film started following the real story.
"The Monuments Men" very clearly wanted to help remember an important part of history and spark a debate about the cost of war on soldiers civilians and history and society. The debate is raging on but the film missed the level of entertainment by not trusting its audience to be interested in exactly what happened.