The Monuments Men

Inspired by true events, The Monuments Men follows several soldiers (including George Clooney’s Frank Stokes, Matt Damon’s James Granger, and Bill Murray’s Richard Campbell) as they embark on a secret mission to recover stolen works of art during the Second World War. It’s a promising premise that’s employed to disappointingly (and increasingly) underwhelming effect by filmmaker Clooney, as The Monuments Men, scripted by Clooney and Grant Heslov, suffers from a lack of cohesiveness that grows more and more problematic as time progresses – which is disappointing, to say the least, given the strength of the movie’s opening half hour. Clooney has infused the proceedings with an unabashedly old-fashioned sensibility that is, at the outset, quite appealing, and it’s certainly difficult to resist the charms of the impressively star-studded cast. The watchable atmosphere persists right up until The Monuments Men shuffles into its meandering midsection, with Clooney and Heslov’s screenplay emphasizing the episodic exploits of the film’s various characters to a less-than-engrossing degree. The narrative, past a certain point, just doesn’t feel as though it’s building towards something, with the movie instead offering up a series of stand-alone interludes that are, generally speaking, simply not all that interesting – which effectively ensures that great chunks of The Monuments Men are devoid of momentum or forward motion. It doesn’t help, either, that many of the performers have been saddled with underdeveloped, one-dimensional characters, thus preventing the viewer from working up much interest in or sympathy for the protagonists’ continuing endeavors. The end result is a terminally innocuous piece of work that flounders more than it excels, which is a shame, obviously, given the caliber of individuals both in front of and behind the camera.

** out of ****