Monuments Men (3 Stars)

I missed this when it was in the cinema. I remember being interested in it after seeing the trailer. It was probably a scheduling problem. I almost wouldn't have bought it on disc, but when I saw it on sale for three Euros on Black Friday I couldn't say No.

The trailer makes the film look like a comedy. That's misleading. The film does have some comedic elements, but overall it's a serious drama. It might look comical that someone as overweight as John Goodman or as old as Bill Murray should go to war, but it all makes sense. The film is a true story, but the number of characters has been greatly reduced. The actual World War Two team, the Monuments Men, was made up of a few dozen men, but the film reduces the team to seven people, the maximum that the audience can relate to.

The film is all about art, mainly paintings and statues. During Germany's conquest of Europe the Nazis looted museums and private collections, taking artwork and shipping it back to Germany. In America a team was assembled that would go behind enemy lines to identify works of art and remove them before the Nazis got their hands on them. This team was made up of non-soldiers, all of them art experts, whether they were university professors or museum curators. Towards the end of the war they had to search for the hiding places of artwork that had already been stolen.

The film takes place from July 1944 until May 1945. The team's job wasn't finished when Germany surrendered. They had to carry on hunting for Nazi treasure, because the Russian army had been instructed to take artwork to pay for war reparations. Who could get to it first?

I enjoyed the story on an intellectual level as a tale that I'd never heard of before. As far as the entertainment was concerned, the film didn't excite me. The story moved slowly, with too little action. It also seemed disjointed, because the seven-man team was split into smaller groups operating in different cities. The Blu-ray is worth the three Euros that I paid, but I don't think I'll want to watch it again.

Success Rate:  + 0.2

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