George Clooneys THE MONUMENTS MEN is very much the vanity project that the films critics have scored it as. The film smugly rides on the self-seriousness of its topic so thoroughly that the director-actor doesnt see the need to invest the film with any real interior drama , much less the weight of history. To complete the self-congratulation, MONUMENTS MEN is replete with insanely upbeat martial music and a mechanistic Spielbergian final flourish that has the aging Clooney and his son walking out of a museum into a blinding shaft of redemptive light. Still, the best way to see a film nowadays is to expect less than nothing - then if you get nothing youre not disappointed and if you get a little more than nothing you can become overjoyed. On its own merits, the film is very watchable as a well-paced old-style World War II pic of the week with hearty ensemble acting from a group of reliable veterans. There are some moving moments of male camaraderie between John Goodman and Jean Dujardin and between Bill Murray and Bob Balaban. Most rewarding, however, is Cate Blanchett as a French museum worker whom Monument Man Matt Damon convinces to earn his trust in Vichy Paris. Their scenes together are the best in the film, they imbue the picture with an element seemingly lost today - the truly grown-up spectacle of a sophisticated male-female relationship. They suggest that a better film could have been built just around them.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:34:01 +0000
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