My friend S and I went to the Showcase in Leeds yesterday to see this film and what a picturesque and heartfelt movie it is.
IMDB says: An unlikely World War II platoon is tasked to rescue art masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their owners.
There is so much more to this movie than just this premise though, there is a real sense of history and achievement, albeit 'Hollywoodised' its true, but the films setting is almost as beautiful as the paintings themselves.
Based on a true story, George Clooney (Up in the Air, The Descendants) plays Frank Stokes the leader of the team tasked with finding stolen art and returning them to their rightful places. His band of men are unlikely 'soldiers' thrust into basic training and then war, and though this, the viewer grows to love the characters. Matt Damon (We bought a Zoo, The Bourne Identity) is James Granger, who is sent to Paris to try and get the truth from a brilliant Cate Blanchet (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Lord of The Rings trilogy), as Claire Simone, a distrustful woman who holds the secrets to where the Germans have taken the art. Bill Murray (Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters) is excellent as Richard Campbell, a droll foil to Bob Balaban's (Gosford Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) grumpy 'private' Preston Savitz and there are some lovely moments between the two, not least of which involves a run-in with a young German at gun point. Jean Dujardin (The Artist, The Wolf of Wall Street) plays Jean-Claude Clermont, the only Frenchman in the group, who makes a gorgeous partnership with John Goodman's (Argo, Monsters Inc.) Walter Garfield character. A couple of their scenes together take you from comic to tragic whilst relaying the pointlessness of war. Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Notting Hill) plays Donald Jeffries, a reformed alcoholic given the chance at redemption and Dimitri Leonidis (Centurion, Tormented) plays the only German in the task force.
In a lovely bit of trivia, on 13 December 2013, a newspaper reported: Police broke into the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer who hoarded hundreds of works believed to have been looted by the Third Reich. Gurlitt has been the focus of huge media attention after a trove of over 1,400 previously unknown masterpieces were uncovered in his Munich flat. A task force appointed to research the origin of the art has said that around 590 pictures fall into the category of art looted or extorted by the Nazis from Jewish collectors. These include pieces by Picasso, Matisse, Munch and Cezanne among others.
Hollywood seems taken with the 'based-on-true-events stories' at the moment (Rush, 12 years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Saving Mr Banks) and for me, long may it continue.
Tagline: It was the greatest art heist in history. 7.5/10
#TheMonumentsMen #GeorgeClooney #MattDamon #BillMurray #JohnGoodman
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