The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men which has George Clooney wearing the director’s cap can be called as a defective sleeping pill. Because this pill/ cinema cant make you sleep but will definitely make you yawn quite a lot. More than Clooney’s direction, it is the sloppy script that makes this “based on a true story” enterprise a dull one.

The focus is on the efforts made by  a team of 7 men lead by Lt. Frank Stoke to protect and retrieve the valuable arts from the Nazis before the end of world war second. How these untrained military unit of 7 men manages to get these valuables back as the Nazi’s lead by Adolf Hitler was planning to destroy all these.

As I said its the dragging screenplay that decelerates the movie in an alarming way. Those initial conversation between the characters played by Matt Damon and George Clooney kind of gives us a feeling that the movie will have some enthusiasm in the narrative. But as soon as our 7 member troop starts the mission the screenplay starts to look like a disorganized piece of writing. Whenever the Lt. Frank Stoke or some other men start to talk emotionally about the need of protecting these art treasure, the events up to that doesn’t  have that level of intensity to make us feel the necessity. Some humorous and sentimental sequences in the movie stood out awkwardly.

In the making George Clooney only extends the lag of the movie in the screenplay level with his direction.We would expect a gradual acceleration and tension in this kind of a movie and that was missing here. Dialogues doesn’t make any great impression. Cinematography is okay. The art direction of the movie was fantastic. Background score is uneven.

Nobody has done a bad job in terms of acting but none of the characters demanded a great effort. George Clooney plays that cool chief. Matt Damon accompanies him in a similar character. Others also played their part.

The Monuments Men seriously lacks the juice to entertain its audience. Clooney and Heslov who earlier produced Argo could have asked Chris Terrio to write the screenplay. My rating is 2/5 for The Monuments Men.