Nauseating

Rating: 2/10 (25 February 2014)

Clooney, aka Mr Pretentious is bad enough at the best of times, but this "vehicle" had me wanting to pull his teeth out.
The whole premise of this movie is flawed and it is a very skewed representation of the "true story" on which it is based; I'll stop a little short of saying that it is an outright lie.
For the uninitiated: a group of soldiers are tasked with re-capturing famous works of art, stolen by the Nazis.
My largest problem with this is the assertion made a number of times throughout the movie that in some way, artwork is more important than human lives because "a bunch of people might be killed, but this is our culture". Spoken like a true Hollywood luvvie and colossal pillock. Culture is CREATED by human lives EVERY DAY and any given life taken by war is one that could potentially produce the next masterpiece.
The fact that Clooney sunk his teeth into this cringeworthy, pretentious twaddle says a lot about the man. Not to mention the fact that some extremely talented artists serving on the monuments men squad lost their lives, thereby depriving the world of any artistic contributions they may have made had they survived.
The acting - with the exception of clooney (who seems to only have one character no matter what movie he is in) is exceptional; I can't fault it at all. It's just such a shame that this same ensemble wasn't used for a better movie.
It is RIGHT that goods were recovered from the Nazis, but to suggest that this endeavour was in any way more important than human lives makes this a dark period in human understanding and not in any way entertaining to watch.