Good performances, brittle script

Rating: 7/10 (29 June 2014)

A couple of years ago, 2 Academy Award winners George Clooney and Grant Heslov became interested in a true story about an allied group, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, tasked with finding and saving cultural works and items before their destruction by Nazis during World War II, and set to write and produce a movie. Due to their fame and connections, they manage to include almost a dozen of internationally known middle-aged actors and the budget of around 70 million USD...
Sounds like a guaranteed way to a blockbuster? Well, the profit has been twice of the budget amount, but most of viewers and reviewers have been critical; and I can understand why. Even great actors like Clooney himself, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, etc. were unable to improve the hectic script, consisting of different places in Europe at the same time - as they spent too little time on screen and their characters were not elaborated. Funny dialogs were pertinent only at times, they were mostly meant to make dull search for creations more "interesting" and smooth... Human connections/relations remained incomplete, and the movie is, in fact, a chronological and arid presentation of events not commonly known from WW II.
Luckily, this 2-hour-movie does not become dull or annoying, but it is still a good example that important awards' winners and nominees do not automatically ensure a catchy and influential story. With ordinary/unknown actors, the movie might have become a flop.