| Director | George Clooney |
|---|---|
| Budget | $70 million |
| Box office | $156.4 million |
In 1943, the Allies are successfully pushing back the Axis powers in Italy. Frank Stokes convinces President Roosevelt that victory will be meaningless if the artistic treasures of Western civilization are lost and is directed to assemble an Army unit of museum directors, curators, art historians, and an architect. The "Monuments Men" will guide Allied units in the search for stolen art so it can be returned to the rightful owners.
In July 1944, the Allies are ashore in France and Claire Simone, a French curator, has been forced to assist German officer Viktor Stahl in the theft of art which goes to Adolf Hitler's Führermuseum or other Nazi officials such as Hermann Göring. She confronts Stahl at a railyard after learning her gallery's collection has been loaded on a train for Germany, to no avail.
Stokes' unit finds its work frustrated by Allied officers who refuse to endanger their troops for the sake of his mission. The unit splits up to cover more ground, with varying degrees of success. James Granger meets Simone, but she refuses to cooperate, suspecting the Americans want to confiscate the stolen art for themselves. British officer Donald Jeffries is killed sneaking into occupied Bruges to save Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges. Richard Campbell and Preston Savitz learn that Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, removed by the priests of Ghent Cathedral for safekeeping, was stolen during transit. Viktor Stahl, hiding as a farmer, is arrested when they identify the paintings in his house as stolen masterpieces from the Rothschild Collection. In December 1944, Walter Garfield and Jean Claude Clermont blunder into a firefight in the countryside. Garfield is unable to find medical help for a wounded Clermont, who dies.
Simone agrees to help after Granger shows her the German Nero Decree ordering widespread destruction in the event of German collapse. She witnesses the Monuments Men return a looted painting to a Jewish family, and provides a comprehensive listing of stolen art and the rightful owners. The team learns of artwork hidden in mines and castles, such as Neuschwanstein, but realizes they are competing with Soviet forces who are also seizing artwork from its occupation zone of Germany as war reparations. Colonel Wegner is also systematically destroying entire art caches.
The team's successes include discovery of a mine hiding over 16,000 art pieces and discovery of the German national treasury's entire gold reserve. As the war ends in May 1945, the team finds another mine in Austria that appears to have been demolished. Racing to beat the Soviets, they find the entrances blocked by the locals to prevent the Nazis from destroying the contents. The team evacuates sculptures, the Ghent Altarpiece, and the Madonna of Bruges, but are unable to retrieve the entire collection before the Soviets arrive.
Stokes reports to President Truman that the team recovered vast quantities of artwork and culturally significant items and requests to stay in Europe to oversee further searching and restoration. When Truman asks Stokes if his efforts were worth the lives of the men he lost, he says they were. Truman then asks if in thirty years anyone will remember those men died for a piece of art. The elderly Stokes, showing his grandson the Madonna of Bruges in 1977, says "Yeah."