The latest directorial effort by George Clooney is The Monuments Men. It stars Clooney himself, Matt Damon, John Goodman, just to name a few. This movie had Oscar written all over it. It doesn't. Was it a good movie? Yes. Was it Oscar quality? No. No it wasn't.
I'm going to tell you this right now, if you plan to go see this as a war thriller or a treasure hunt thriller you will be disappointed. You won't be disappointed by the quality of the film, just that is wasn't what anybody expected. It's just a plain old drama. Nothing special about it. The Monuments Men had the chance of standing out from other movies. It unfortunately didn't. It's too bad. This is a good typical drama. It needs more recognition and it deserves better then other people are giving it credit for.
There is one negative you can spot at the very first. The pacing at the very first. You have 7 main characters. The introduced them all in less then 5 minutes! What the heck! I want some character development, I want time to get to know these people, I want to feel attached to them so I can feel I'm along the journey with them. The next thing I'm about to say you could count it as a spoiler but, you knew it was going to happen. When someone usually dies in a movie you feel for them and the other characters. When people died I honestly didn't care. I did't know the characters enough to care. I wasn't connected to them like I am with almost every other movie. The pacing was fast until some of the main characters died. Then it went by like this type of movie should. It felt like they wanted to make the people die as fast as they could. Character development is one of the key things to make a movie. This really bugged me. The Monuments Men was 1 hour and 50 minutes. Not even 2 hours! That extra 30 minutes or even 20 could have been used to actually introduce us to the characters properly.
This is a well put together film (besides the pacing for the first quarter of the film). The acting was great. I wouldn't say it's near Oscar worthy. They casted this perfectly. One thing that I like to see in movies but doesn't hurt it if it's not there is banter between characters. The Monuments Men split up in to groups of 2 people. Everyone of those groups has some bit of banter. It was almost funny and dramatic and the same time. The screenplay was good. It is the scripts fault that the characters were not introduced. The direction and dialogue of this was above average. I really think it should stand out more. I can't give any credit to the story because history wrote it. Go History!
The Monuments Men is a movie that deserves more attention. It's a great movie that you'll love right when you get out of the theater but, as more time passes by you'll start to forget bits and pieces of it. I guess that means I will have to see this movie again which I'll be glad to. The Monuments Men is a solid 7.5/10.
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