The Monuments Men - Receive a Rather Smal Monument

Rating: 4/10 (3 May 2018)

I'm sure Mr Clooney had some good intentions for making this work but did he really have to set his hand to writing and directing? These tasks he has done rather poorly and drags much of his good intentions down to the level of a typical Dirty Dozen meets Oceans 11 type - this story needed more respect. It's also getting to be overly obvious that George 'casts' his cigarettes as closely as his co stars - everything he does features smoking as a major influence to the story (looks ominously like payola unfortunately?) His big cast are also pretty much your Hollywood HBO TV variety and their characters are underdeveloped to the point of creating little empathy. Pity, as the initial-based-on-fact story is worth a far stronger treatment. A good documentary could have covered this more convincingly. I'd recommend taking another look at Frankenheimer's "The Train" to get a better understanding of the significance of this whole Nazi 'Art theft' business. George was fortunate to get his big budget back but, I suspect many might have been somewhat disappointed with the end product considering such a costly input.