Outshining The History

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2014)

The Monuments Men depicts one of those parts of history that sounds like some sort of a mission impossible, it's about a group of volunteers who came out to find and protect European artifacts that were taken by the Nazis during World War II. It's not much of a popular story, but it's pretty interesting. The film follows some roots from the inspired team chemistry of Oceans Eleven to the wondrous tone of Indiana Jones. While those added flavors are charming and all, the risks of the mission is unfortunately not taken seriously, which leads to something less remarkable than it should have been. However, the great cast keeps it a lot entertaining even if there is still a better meat within this story.
Although it's a historical war movie, the film takes a lighter tone. There are still violence and terror happening on screen, but they are only taken as breezy bits of tension. It's disappointing because those are likely the only parts when the mission feels like it's going somewhere. Anything else are either speeches about how important the arts that they're supposed to save or a long conversation waiting to engage a random punchline. These things are not particularly bad, but the portrayal of whatever the actual people were going through still deserves a serious consideration. So now we're just watching a feel-good comedy taken place on a classical environment.
Everything looks magnificent at least. Clooney as a director seems to love bringing the seventies/eighties bright tone with marvelously rich production to give lots of life to the exteriors. It instantly makes everything looks like a good fun old fashioned adventure film. Even the music score also has a sense of nostalgia. But the real deal around is the cast. George Clooney and Matt Damon are obviously the stars here, while they did what they do best, it was the supporting who gave more color to this inert gloss. Cate Blanchett gives a charming personality to her character. The presence of Bill Murray could make anyone smile for, sometimes, no reason. And there is quite a joy to be found in the scenes of Bob Balaban and Jean Dujardin.
It's difficult to call The Monuments Men a bad film, it's also troubling to call it a good one either. There is an obvious heart to notice within the surfaces, the stars are awfully charismatic and they seem to be having fun doing their classic thing. I could say it's an absolutely charming film, but the story behind this seems to be more interesting than the merits. I guess this is only recommendable to the ones who seek for easy entertainment because the true tensions of World War II are hardly welcome here.