Big Movie.

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2014)

Nice cast in a splashy movie about a group of American officers and men trying to prevent the Germans from absconding with all the art treasures of France during the last months of the war.
It's uneven and kind of derivative. In the last scenes, the heavies are not the Nazis. The war is over. But the Russian "Trophy Brigade" fills the gap and there is a lot of cross-cutting between the ugly, advancing Russians and the GIs trying to drive away with the loot before the Russians arrive.
The general theme is probably from "The Train", or maybe from Clooney's "Three Kings;" the idea of a group of comrades of disparate backgrounds resembles the Frank Sinatra movies with the Rat Pack; and a scene mourning the death of a friend, while the ironic "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is sung in the background by somebody who sounds like Judy Garland, first appeared in "The Victors." No one really has a chance to display any acting chops. Clooney can be pretty good in the right role. His humor is dead pan. John Goodman, ditto; he was great in the Cohen's "Barton Fink." Matt Damon distinguished himself in a number of films. Bob Balaban is reliable, either as villain or as, here, a mousy Jewish professor. The best performance is given by Cate Blanchett, as a French resistance fighter. Maybe an award should be given to Holger Handtke as the Nazi officer who manages to maintain an expression that might have been carved in marble while he orders people about or is insulted while a prisoner. Also he resembles Michael Moriarty.
It's not a bad film, though I must say the musical score really sucks. It's just that it alternates clumsily between the wisecracking shenanigans of "Kelly's Heroes" and something resembling drama. Each opposition seems to drain much of the life out of the other.
Michelangelo's "Madonna and Child," treated as the summum bonum of fine art, is worth drooling over. It's a fine, beautiful, and innovative piece of work. The Germans did in fact get it out to Germany and it was found considerably later and brought back to Bruges, where it now sits behind a shield of bulletproof glass so that no maniac attacks it with a hammer, as happened to Michelangelo's "Pieta."