George Clooney’s The Monuments Men was long pegged as a frontrunner for the awards season we’re currently in the midst of, and whilst its delayed release puts it out of the running for the time being, the anticipation surrounding it hasn’t changed a bit.
Clooney was last seen behind the camera back in 2011 with the brilliant The Ides of March, and we’re all looking forward to his follow-up. With just under a month to go before its stateside release, Fox has released a new featurette, in which Clooney describes the task these men undertook as the biggest treasure hunt of all time.
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men focuses 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. 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? 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.
Clooney takes the lead alongside a brilliant ensemble, joined by Matt Damon, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville, and Bob Balaban.
Grant Heslov worked with Clooney once more to co-write the script, adapting the original book by Robert M. Edsel, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.
The Monuments Men will be released in the US on February 7th, before arriving a week later in the UK on 14th February.
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