Monumental Disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (27 May 2014)

What a waste of talent, great potential of a story that should be told, with great actors, but lousy composition, script and directing. Certainly one of George Clooney's big flops. This needs to be re-made better. While it's based on true events, it really is a bit like the typical American/John Wayne movies, they are the good guys, out to 'save the world' and it's art from the Germans as well as the Russians (But lets not worry about the Thieving British and the Parthenon Marbles still in the British Museum). Great idea, but the storyline as depicted in the movie is rather disjoint and ridiculous: and very likely an embellished Hollywood account of actual events. A team of 8 scholars and museum curators, get some basic military training (and lets not worry about passing the army medical, or if some were close to retirement age) and are sent into enemy territory to track-down, identify and retrieve great works of art. Now if they were all given the rank of Major or above, they may have had better luck and support from their own forces, or better still assigned with a dozen 'real' soldiers to assist and protect them when they do encounter the enemy. As a movie it's all over the place, nothing really holds it together, just repetitive melodrama spread across about half a dozen missions. But it does make you think about the value of a life vs art, especially the difference between that of a German vs American soldier's life.