A fictionalized take on the non-fiction book of the same name by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter, The Monuments Men follows a group of over-the-hill art experts, historians, and academics (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, and Bob Balaban) led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney, who also directed) who are on a Presidential-approved mission to recover and return the great works of European art looted by the Nazis even as the Second World War rages on around them. These scholars undergo basic training and must become soldiers as much as they do treasure hunters. They soon split up into different units to track down leads and recover key artworks.

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The Monuments Men plays like a first cut, that rough assemblage of footage cobbled together for the filmmakers to see and judge but not the public, leaving one to assume the film simply got away from director George Clooney and his team in the editing room. It's a shame because there's a fine and engaging wartime tale in there somewhere, but not up on the screen.Maybe Monuments Men would have been better suited as a cable miniseries where we could spend the time traversing war-torn Europe with these characters, or perhaps there's a much longer director's cut Blu-ray in store that will, like Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, give us the movie we were truly intended to see.Given the stellar ensemble cast Clooney's gathered, it's immensely frustrating to see so many of them given so little dimension or so little to do. You've got one of the most notoriously difficult to land actors in your film, Bill Murray, and he's relegated to just being a secondary guy with only two scenes of note -- one of which, the real "Oscar clip" moment for Murray's character, is ruined by Clooney's decision to cut away to some unknown soldier dying on an operating table. Why? We just met this guy, we've zero connection to him so the momentousness of his death is lost, and I don't think there's even a close look at his face. So why are you cutting away from Bill Murray's big scene?Of course, it would also have been nice to have had Murray's character's name said more often. (It's Campbell.) Ditto Clooney and Goodman's characters. It was two-thirds into Monuments Men before I realized Clooney's character was named Stokes. Balaban, Bonneville and Dujardin's characters -- hell, even Stokes' young driver Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas) -- are all more memorable and given more to do than the film's biggest stars.Damon's mission is to go to France and wait for Cate Blanchett to like and trust him enough to hand over a key clue. Otherwise, he's hanging with some farmer buddy for most of the film. The scenes of Damon and his old farmer buddy/contact don't drive the story forward and are dramatically stillborn. Like the cutaway from Murray's big scene, you're left wondering why you're watching these scenes play out when you could be getting to know the team better or, you know, finding looted art.Blanchett's fine as Claire Simone, the French woman whose job as a secretary for the Nazis proves key to the Monuments Men's mission. Her character at least has some sense of identity and stakes. A whole movie about her probably would have been as (if not more) compelling that one about the Monuments Men. Blanchett is also nearly unrecognizable initially so you might find her first close-up a bit jarring.Clooney clearly wanted to make a Big War Movie in the vein of the types of star-studded movies of the '50s and '60s, but at a certain point if you've seen one establishing shot of soldiers marching down a road or jeeps going to and fro in a wintry encampment you've seen them all. Move on with your story. We know it's World War II; you don't have to keep showing jeeps or tents for us to remember. It's odd then that given so much money and attention spent on background details and extras that so many momentous events are glossed over via dialogue ("Hey, you hear? The Germans surrendered.")Since we don't get to really get to know most of these characters then the movie has to convince us that at least what they're risking their lives for is important, which it does repeatedly and with hammer-to the-head subtlety.Stokes flat-out states several times, when the question of whether risking human life to save art is worth it, that We Are Fighting to Save Our Civilization and Culture, Which Art Represents. It's a noble idea and provocative question, but the movie fails to give us any characters of depth or with any real identity to become invested in so as to feel the weight of their sacrifice when their time comes. One character comes close, but nearly everything we know about him we learn from a third party. It would've been nice for him to have actually mattered enough to get some quality screen time.Ultimately, The Monuments Men needed to have as much narrative focus and dimension as it does reverence for its subject matter.