Not all golden

Rating: 5/10 (1 August 2015)

Woman in Gold stars Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann a Jewish Austrian who fled to America. The artist Gustav Klimt painted her aunt who later became known as Woman in Gold. The painting along with others had been confiscated by the Nazis and later went on display at an Austrian museum.
After her sister dies in the late 1990s, Maria living in LA seeks the help of a young lawyer Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) whose family also fled Austria during the Jewish persecution to recover the paintings.
Maria and Randol travel to Austria and discover the government and the museum are obstinate. As a journalist who befriends them (Daniel Bruhl) informs them that the authorities will put every hurdle in their path.
When they return to America, Randol discovers that he could use a loophole to sue the museum in American soil and renews the legal battle.
Woman in Gold is more than a courtroom thriller which has been condensed. However it is unfortunately clichÃ© ridden film with little mystery or intrigue. It really could had been a made for television film but for its starry cast.
The characters although real, are just cyphers there to develop the story. Neither Maria nor Randol felt like real people to me even though we get flashbacks of a young Maria in Nazi Austria and her attempts to flee the regime. In the modern day setting the museum officials and the Austrian officials are made to look like stereotypical bad guys wanting to keep the painting at any costs or in this case hoping to spin things out until the elderly Maria dies.
The performances are earnest, the flashbacks give the film weight which the script really does not deserve and the direction was pedestrian.