THE MONUMENTS MEN BOX OFFICE MOVIE

The Monuments Men is a 2014 American-German war film directed by George Clooney, written and produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov, and starring Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett. Based on the non-fiction book, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel, the film follows an allied group, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, tasked with finding and saving pieces of art and other culturally important items before their destruction by Hitler during World War II.[4][5]

The film, co-produced by Columbia Pictures (in association with 20th Century Fox) and Babelsberg Studio, was released on February 7, 2014

In 1943 during World War II, the Allies are making good progress driving back the Axis powers in Italy. However, Frank Stokes (George Clooney) persuades the US President that 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. To minimize that threat, Stokes is directed to assemble an Army unit nicknamed the "Monuments Men" comprising seven museum directors, curators, and art historians to both guide Allied units and search for stolen art to return it to the rightful owners.

In occupied France, Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), a curator in Paris, is forced to allow Nazi officers like Viktor Stahl to oversee the theft of art for either Adolf Hitler's proposed Führermuseum in Linz, or as the personal property of senior commanders like Herman Goering. While she is nearly arrested for helping her Maquis brother unsuccessfully recapture such items, all seems lost when she discovers that Stahl is taking all of her gallery's contents to Germany as the Allies approach Paris. When she runs to the railyard to confront Stahl, he fires on her with his pistol; although she does not seek cover, she is not hit, but can only watch helplessly as Stahl escapes with the stolen artwork.

As for Stokes' unit, they find their work is frustrated by their own side's combat units who refuse to restrict their tactical options for the sake of preserving architecture, while James Granger (Matt Damon) finds that Simone will not cooperate with those whom she suspects are art looters themselves. The unit splits up for various objectives with varying degrees of success. 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.

Richard Campbell (Bill Murray) and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban) attempt to track down a stolen Belgian panel set of religious artwork (the Van Eyck altarpiece looted from Ghent cathedral), and in doing so, find and arrest Viktor Stahl, hiding as a farmer, when they identify the paintings in his house as originals stolen from the Rothschild Collection. Walter Garfield (John Goodman) and Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin) are caught in a crossfire of a battle and Clermont is mortally wounded. Meanwhile, Simone reconsiders when Granger shows her the Nero Decree to destroy all German possessions if Hitler dies or Germany falls, and when she sees Granger return a painting looted from a Jewish family murdered in the death camps to its rightful place as a symbolic gesture. Realizing the Americans are serious in their intentions, she eventually provides a comprehensive ledger that provides valuable information to identify stolen art.

Even as the team learn that the artwork is being stored in various mines and castles, they also learn that they must now compete against the Soviet Union who have units of their own seizing artwork as war reparations. Meanwhile, Colonel Wegner is systematically removing and destroying whole art collections as per orders. Eventually, the team have some success as they discover at least one mine with over 16,000 art pieces as well as grotesque caches as barrels of gold teeth from victims of the death camps. In addition, they also discover gold assets of the Nazi German national treasury, whose capture effectively bankrupts the regime.

Finally, they find a mine in Austria that seems destroyed and is in what should become part of the Soviet occupation zone. However, the team discover that only the entrances were damaged by the locals in order to fool the Nazis and they manage to gain entry even as their fellows delay the oncoming Soviets. As a result, the team evacuate as much artwork as possible, including the sculpture Jeffries died defending, before the Soviets arrive.

Finally, Stokes reports to President Truman that they have recovered vast quantities of artwork and various other culturally significant items. As he requests to stay in Europe to oversee further searching and restoration, Truman asks if his efforts were worth it. Stokes firmly replies it was.

Decades later, the elderly Stokes (Nick Clooney) takes his grandson to see Michelangelo's Madonna sculpture, amid large crowds of youth appreciating the pieces of humanity's creativity that his men sacrificed so much to preserve in war.

•           George Clooney as Lt. Frank Stokes, loosely based on George L. Stout

•           Nick Clooney plays the aged Stokes in the film's final scene.

•           Matt Damon as Lt. James Granger, loosely based on James Rorimer

•           Bill Murray as Sgt. Richard Campbell, loosely based on Robert K. Posey

•           John Goodman as Sgt. Walter Garfield, loosely based on Walker Hancock

•           Jean Dujardin as Lt. Jean Claude Clermont

•           Bob Balaban as Pvt. Preston Savitz, loosely based on Lincoln Kirstein

•           Hugh Bonneville as Lt. Donald Jeffries, loosely based on Ronald E. Balfour

•           Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone, loosely based on Rose Valland

•           Sam Hazeldine as Colonel Langton

•           Dimitri Leonidas as Sam Epstein, loosely based on Harry L. Ettlinger