if you wish to waste some of your precious time

Rating: 3/10 (28 November 2014)

If is very unusual for me to give up on a film before the end, even though afterwards I might feel that I have wasted my time. But this film is exceptional. I have never experienced such a waste of opportunities. A good - true - story, good caste of experienced actors, and the potential for some action, as well as some photogenic scenes, should have led to a reasonable film. It fails because it is badly written and badly directed. It is also poorly conceived - a comedy drama on such topic!
On a side note, there is a lot of confusion about Nazi art, in this film and more generally. The Germans both bought and stole art, from Jew and non-Jew. The treatment of artworks at the end of the war didn't always clearly distinguish between these different categories. There was a notorious incident in which the real Monuments Men resisted orders from their military superiors to send several hundred works of art to the USA, as war spoils. Unfortunately, although the western Allies, generally behaved responsibly, the Soviets stole what they wanted. Even today, many of those people who lost art to the Germans and then to the Soviets are still waiting for the return of their property. I won't touch on the theft of land and houses by the Communists after the war.