The Monuments Men (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on February 9, 2014 @ tonymacklin.net.

George Clooney is a man of many talents. He's an engaging movie star.

But at times his glibness takes over. His geniality gets in the way.

The Monuments Men is a project that should make a serious - if not profound - statement, while it entertains. It doesn't.

Clooney's penchant for coyness makes the film hopscotch across France and Germany. It skitters rather than penetrates.

The Monuments Men - with the fatuous "based on a true story" - is the tale of a small group of men who set out to save the great art works in France and Germany that had been sentenced to confiscation and/or destruction by Hitler as WWII was evolving.

Clooney has said how important scripts are to him, but his screenplay with co-producer Grant Heslov is superficial and sometimes trite. One of the basic themes of the film is the whether or not art is worth human life. That's a question that has been settled long ago. But the writers dredge it up three different times. It seems almost indifferently tacked-on.

The music by Alexandre Desplat hurts, rather than helps. Clooney and Desplat create different tones that clash.The music is playful or romantic or dramatic. And it's conventional. It adds to the disconnectedness of the film.

The film is part odyssey, part gambol. The cast doesn't seem to know whether they're in a serious movie or a romp.

There's Clooney flashing a grin or a putting on a frown as Frank Stokes, the leader of the intrepid group.

Although Clooney and Heslov (who, of course has a cameo as a doctor) based their screenplay on a book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, they add backstories that are flat, one-dimensional, and tired. They are hoary set pieces.

Donald (Hugh Bonneville) is an alcoholic, who (yawn) is given a chance for redemption. James Granger (Matt Damon) is a true-blue expert, and loyal to his wife stateside, so he turns down the advances of lonely, French damsel Claire (Cate Blanchett). He turns Paris into Podunk. He's probably a eunuch.

John Goodman widens his eyes on a few occasions. Bill Murray and Bob Balaban are present.

The casting director seems seems drawn to faces that are negligible. The actors who portray the Nazis make them seem like nonentities.

Clooney has mentioned John Frankenheimer's The Train (1965) as a strong film about rescuing art.

Frankenheimer once told me how he and Burt Lancaster were making the film up as it went along. On location, they wrote it every night.

Clooney and Heslov might have taken a lesson from Frankenheimer and Lancaster. Their scenes and dialogue might be fresher and more vital if they had created them on the spot. Instead, they're clunky.

Unfortunately, most of the film might have been constructed by a would-be German "artist."

But despite the coy meanderings of The Monuments Men, I found the ending was heartfelt.

The last sequence obviously is very meaningful for Clooney, although many in the audience won't realize why and how much. It has genuine sentiment for its director.

The ending may rescue the film. It reverberates with humanity.

Like art, it is potent and affirming.

And personal.