The Monuments Men

Director George Clooney’s war epic about historians racing to save art from the Nazis looks and feels like it was just taken out of a time capsule buried in 1958. It’s quite breezy for a war movie, peppered with laughs provided by a strong cast including Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and John Goodman as men trying to thwart Hitler’s plan for a giant museum. It has one of those whistle-infused soundtracks, and it doesn’t hurt that Clooney and Dujardin look like Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly. The movie moves briskly, and is perhaps a bit too weightless for a movie of such heavy subject matter. It also has a useless subplot involving Damon and Cate Blanchett that’s deserving of the cutting room floor. Still, Clooney has great command of the camera here, the ensemble (especially Murray and Goodman) shines, and it’s fun to watch. This is an interesting piece of World War II history, and it’s good that somebody has made a decent movie to cover this chapter of Hitler insanity.