The Monuments Men

George Clooney assembles an all-star cast in one of the most anticipated films of 2013. However, its bump back to 2014 deflated all awards hopes, and maybe there is more to the delay story than just "visual effects setbacks". To say that the film disappoints is not entirely accurate because that would imply lofty expectation and failure to follow through. There is a very lofty expectation for this film on my part, but the general expectation has fizzled after being shelved for nearly two months, ultimately getting a dreaded "early February" release. It is a WWII historical biopic headlined by George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, and Hugh Bonneville. Among them there are 5 Oscars, 12 Oscar nominations, and another pending win (Cate Blanchett - Best Actress for Blue Jasmine). On paper, this is a no-brainer for Best Picture of the year, not an after-the-fact no-brainer like Argo, but truly a front-runner in any awards season.

What unfolds on the screen however, is a poorly executed, genre-confused film full of dead ends and potential. There is too much humor for it to be a drama, too much violence for it to be a comedy, too much suspense for it to be action, not enough "actual" suspense for it to be a thriller, not enough character development for it to be a character study, and too much art for it to be interesting. I left the theatre not knowing how to describe the film other than a mediocre storytelling experience by Clooney where he takes the best lines and the lead role in a historically important cultural adventure through Europe at the end of the great war and there is danger and a race against time. Not a glowing review? No, it is not.

We start out near the tail end of the war as Frank Stokes, an art historian, convinces the US Army to commission a team of engineers, sculptors, art historians, painters, and other culturally highbrow experts to make a run through Europe, saving priceless pieces of art before Nazi Germany can destroy them. They target two in particular that I'm a bit embarrassed to say I haven't really heard of, and the sculpture and painting become the emotional driving force for the team as they encounter British, American, French, Russian, and even Germans during one of the darkest times in history. As they work to figure out where Hitler has hidden all of the seized pieces of art, the war is coming to an end, and the audience is left to wonder if they will in fact save the day.

I think that Bill Murray and John Goodman are amazing actors, plain and simple. Balaban is entertaining, Dujardin is a bit overrated, and Bonneville is a seasoned veteran Brit. Clooney and Damon are almost too big of names for a film to be successful anymore, and Blanchett is one of the most talented women on the planet. This particular combination is exactly what it is intending to be, but in a bad way. It's a mish-mash of personalities meant to dazzle in their esotericism, but nobody gets the point. They just don't go together very well. It's as if Daniel Day-Lewis and Adam Sandler were ironically cast in a buddy dramedy and everyone was supposed to get it. Nobody gets it, although it could be an amazing experiment. Anyhow, I'm digging too deeply. It's an amazing cast of characters, but they just don't go together on this one. .

The characters themselves are never given time or development for us to care about them properly. they are dropped in Normandy together, and we don't even really know who is who and what they specialize in. I suppose Clooney wanted to get on with the story and get to the good stuff, but he inadvertently skipped some really important pieces of foundation. Subsequently, when key characters die (sorry - spoiler...) and the film takes on a tone of grievance, I didn't feel anything because I simply didn't know the characters in the way that Clooney did in his mind. Not sure if that makes total sense.

The writing is dull, and Clooney and his buddy Grant Heslov adapted the screenplay from the book by Robert Edsel and Bret Witter. It is the kind of story that I'm sure jumps out and says "Ooh! Pick me! Pick Me!" in the adaptation world, but where Clooney blew it was in not sticking to a specific tone. Humor, action, suspense, drama, intrigue, and rich historical fodder. It's a bit too much. I admire the hell out of Clooney's ambition to be a great director. He has chosen biopic projects for most of his previous films (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Leatherheads, Good Night and Good Luck) and he has told a great story in each of them. Well done and high quality they are not, however. What's missing is the dramatic patience. Let the scenes linger a little, and don't be so rushed to put so much and so many people on the screen. Scenes don't have to come and go according to a stopwatch.

Anyway, I respect George Clooney tremendously and love his choice of projects and am always first in line to see a film that he's involved in. His next acting gig, Tomorrowland, is Brad Bird's first directing job since the awesomely entertaining MI: Ghost Protocol. It's a sci-fi film about a man and a kid who share some sort of intellectual genius and scientific curiosity. Very mysterious, but could be cool.

This film gets a 10 for cast, and a solid 9 for story, but when it all played out, it just wasn't very good. 6/10.