Movie Review: The Monuments Men (2014)

The Monuments Men (2014)
D: George Clooney
W: George Clooney, Grant Heslov.
Based on the book The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter.
S: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray.

George Clooney directs, co-writes and stars in this based on true events story about a rag tag group of art scholars, museum curators and art historians turned soldiers who go into enemy territory during the final months of World War II to rescue pieces of art plundered by the Nazis. 
This was a film I was looking forward to for a long time. I remember hearing about the concept and I got excited. I am a gigantic sucker for World War II movies and movies about a rag tag group of people teaming up to combat a common foe. So you can imagine that I was really upset when the film was pushed back from it's original release date of December 18, 2013 to February 7, 2014. But now the film has finally been released and... it's okay. 

I will admit that this film isn't as great as I was hoping it to be and it does suffers from a lot of problems, but at the same time I still did really enjoy the film. 

One of the problems that effects the movie is drastic changes in tone. At one second it will be a very sad a somber scene involving the death of a character and then seconds later will go to comedic scene like Bill Murray's character chipping his tooth on homemade beef jerky. 

Another element that can be seen as a problem is that there isn't much development of the characters. The movie seems to rely on the actors portraying them to get the personalities across. For example, one of the Monuments Men, a sculptor named Walter Garfield, is portrayed by John Goodman, and he comes off exactly as you'd expect. He's jolly, he's friendly but can be tough and determined. And that's it the characters just come off as you'd expect from the actors. Only a few characters actual have a persona outside of the actor portraying them. One is Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas) a Jewish German immigrant who signed up for the Army and the other is Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett) a Frenchwoman who has the inside scoop on where the art from France may have been taken. 

While I do see this point as flaw, it honestly doesn't bother me. I think it's because these actors do have distinct personalities that associating them to their characters isn't that bad, in my eyes at least. Though that sadly doesn't help Matt Damon's character, he really doesn't add much to his character unfortunately.  

I'm willing to admit I'm probably giving this movie a free pass because I'm a sucker for these kind of stories and it that make this a bit of biased review. But I still think this is a pretty enjoyable film and worth at least a matinee. It gets a thumbs up from me.