The Monuments Men....
 

Has anyone seen this? It is getting killed in the reviews as most critics think there is a little too much talk and too little action.

Cloony dropped $70 mil on this, and as he was the Director it has a lot of his style in it. Some critics have called it Ocean's 15 due to the story line and the pacing.

But is it worth watching? I like the story. I just don't know if I will like the way it was told.

Haven't seen it. I'll probably wait for it to go to DVD. I saw a thing about it recently on either A&E or History (don't recall which). It's a good story worthy of a documentary. Sexing it up for a feature length movie would be really difficult.

We saw it last night. I thought it was quite good. Not sure just how historically accurate it is though as it's an aspect of the war I'm almost completely ignorant about. Wife liked it as well. Overall I thought it was worth watching. As for the critics *****ing. I long since ceased to give a rats ass what critics think. Not everything in a was is adrenalin racing battle action. Most of war is often extreme boredom and un-glamorus slog.

- Peter.

I read the book, and I'd guess close to half of the movie or less was true to the book.

I thought Clooney did such a poor job of making the movie that I wouldn't recommend it.

I'll have to see it, from the previews it portrays the Germans in a fairly unrealistic manner.

I don't think they would torch art like that, they hid it in mines and tried to steal it but so did the Russians. They also evacuated Paris against Hitlers orders in order to save it...

Both sides did a significant amount of damage to historical sites, no one can claim the high ground their.

On the Eastern front a significant amount of damage was done to the Russian palaces by Germans looting them, I don't think a lot of it was ever recovered. But in 1945 the Russians got their revenge.

I can see where Hitler would give the order to burn everything, but then Hitler gave a lot of orders that were pretty wacky. I think the reality would have been those in charge would have seen the art as a chip to bargain with in order to save their own hides and the last they would have done was destroy it. After all, Hitler only knew what he was told and it was clear to everyone how all of this was about to end.

The film did $20 mil. It will need $280,000,000 to go into profit, so this may be one of those films that takes 3 years to break even. But after that it will be pulling in coins for the next 69 years for someone.

The 'Amber Room' is still missing. The Russians would love to have it back and know it is somewhere in Germany.

The Germans did torch artwork like that. It's documented. Read the book.

They torched thousands of art works. Watch "The Rape of Europe", it's on Netflix.

No one in human history deliberately destroyed more art, cultural artifacts, historical buildings, etc, then the nazi's did.

Oh well, all in good fun.

As a former Civil Affairs soldier, I have interest in this. These guys spawned a subset of CA, as indicated by thins document. http://www.uscbs.org/documents/gta4101002crc.pdf

and this history of CA during WWII: Chapter XXXI The Protection of Historical Monuments and Art Treasures

Thanks for the plug. I will check it out.

And thanks for the factual comment on this. I was stating an opinion based on my understanding of the world. The Nazi's are hard for me to wrap my head around.

I have Netflix.

I'll be sure to watch it.

Thanks.

I also read the book "Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis" by Robert M. Edsel.

It is about the Monuments Men working to save art, buildings, statues, cultural artifacts in Italy, i.e. Rome, Florence, etc.

The movie Monuments Men only covered what the Nazis destroyed in Belgium and France. What they did in Italy was probably worse. The book's author estimated that 25% of the Western world's art was in Florence alone.

Another staggering figure that was in the book.

The Nazis stole 5,000,000 pieces of art, and 1,000,000 have never been recovered.