The majority of people are aware of World War II and what happened during the Holocaust. However, many are not as aware that the war against Nazi Germany wasn’t the only one we were fighting. We were also fighting for our culture — our art.

Monuments Men was directed by George Clooney and produced and written by Clooney and Grant Heslov. It was based on a true story and excellently captured this lesser known part of the war.

The movie depicts a group of art scholars turned army men who fight to preserve various works of European art during the war. The movie artfully shows the struggles these men faced. It had a fantastic overall plot that consisted of the fight to find and preserve the Ghent Altarpiece which had been stolen by the Nazis.

Along with the main plot, the movie also contains several subplots, such as trying to obtain Michelangelo’s Maddona and Child. In addition to their search for works of great cultural importance, each character had his or her own individual subplot that enhanced his or her character.

However, these individual subplots were admittedly weak. This can be moderately expected, though, since the movie contained many different characters, most of whom were equally as important to the plot. If Clooney and Heslov had taken their time to fully flesh out every character, we would have another ridiculously long movie on our hands that no one would want to sit through.

Some may also criticize the movie’s choppy quality. It does skip from scene to scene and from issue to issue, and the characters don’t portray much of the problem solving that realistically would have happened. However, this would have just needlessly added to the length of the movie. By not showing the problem solving process for each minor problem, the movie focused on the bigger picture and the larger problem.

Overall, the movie excellently showcased a new angle of World War II, which is a rare and impressive accomplishment given the multitude of World War II movies in existence. Despite its flaws in character development and a somewhat choppy plot, Monuments Men is a must-see.