An action thriller about the greatest treasure hunt in history, the film The Monuments Menbased on the true story of World War II.
The Allied forces have over powered the Nazis and are making good progress driving back the Axis powers in Italy.
The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners.
Frank Stokes (George Clooney) is directed to assemble an Army unit nicknamed the “Monuments Men” comprising musuem directors, curators, art historians and an acrhitect too. Victory will have little meaning if the art treasures of Western civilization are lost in the fighting, either as collateral damage in combat or looted.
The mission of this group is to minimize that threat by searching for stolen art and return it to the rightful owners.
It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed?
Spanning several countries like Italy, France and Germany, this thriller is based on true story recorded in the book The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter.
But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.
Cate Blanchett plays Claire Simone, a curator in Paris who is helpless to witness the theft of art by German (Nazi) officers whose aim was to take them for Adolf Hitler. At some moment it is understood that he had been ordered to destroy the priceless monuments if he is not successful in his mission.
The unit splits up for various objectives and end up with varying degrees of success. James Granger’s (Matt Damon) task is to get Claire’s confidence in their attempt and seek her help, who initially suspects them, but eventually assists them in their task to that extent that she parts with comprehensive ledger that she mantained for years, which provides valuable information to identify stolen art.
Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville) of the British Army attempts to arrange the safety of a Belgian church with valuable artwork and is killed attempting to prevent the Nazi Colonel Wegner from stealing a statue of the Madonna and Child by Michelangelo.
The team manages to recover over 16,000 art pieces and tons of gold assets of the Nazi German national treasury. That was a big catch.
Decades later, Stokes takes his grandson to see the musuem to show the pieces of humanity’s creativity that his men sacrificed so much to preserve in war.
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Cast of The Monuments Men:
George Clooney as Frank Stokes
Matt Damon as James Granger
Bill Murray as Richarg Campbell
John Goodman as Walter Garfield
Jean Dujardin as Jean Claude Clermont
Bob Balaban as Preston Savitz
Hugh Bonneville as Donald Jeffries
Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone
Credits of The Monuments Men:
Studio – Columbia Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures, Smokehouse Pictures, Studio Babelsberg
Directed by George Clooney
Produced by George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Screenplay – George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Music – Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography – Phedon Papamichael
Editing by Stephen Mirrione
