Basic message without being overly preachy

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2014)

The message here, of course, is the value of culture and art as opposed to human lives, but that's putting it simply.
Clooney and company make it clear they aren't justifying murder for art's sake, or justifying the deaths of the many people who built the wall of China.
A group of middle aged men, experts mostly in art, volunteer during World War II to salvage art stolen by the Nazis, some of it meant to be destroyed, much of it meant initially to be reissued as "Nazi propaganda" with the extermination of everyone who would say otherwise, and when the war is nearly lost, obviously meant for use as a fortune stock pile for Nazis to buy their lives with.
The volunteers aren't vital to any other effort of the war, and this is what they want to do. They are determined to risk only their own lives, and that is an important cog of this story.
The film has poor sound quality, and you need closed captioning, so it's hard to give a high score to, but it is otherwise well directed and written, with the liberties of the facts taken not too extensive. It isn't like the crazy OK Corral stories we have gotten from Hollywood.
"Culture" is not only overrated, as the characters here overrate it, but it is in fact responsible for almost all atrocities. Pol Pot even felt his sadistic Khmer Rouge was his own "culture" and "art". Should that be salvaged? If Hitler won the war, and exterminated all who questioned him, the very art that was the culture for other people would be the "art" and "culture" of his Reich, of his Satanic cult of Nazis, virtually the hand picked most demonic of the German people. It would then be heralded as their work, and be their "culture". Don't think it couldn't happen.
The good news is that the film doesn't preach the point to us, but only states that "culture" and "art" is that important to the "monument men" who risk their lives. This is important to remember.