Through its commissioning of the finest artists, the Catholic Church has historically been the foremost patron of the arts. Sacred art has long been the cultural standard for what is beautiful.

But what happens when the art of a culture is destroyed? That is the question at the heart of the new World War II film The Monuments Men.

While the movie is set during the close of World War II, it's not a typical war movie, and it's not about typical soldiers. It’s reminiscent of many ensemble films about the war. (Think The Bridge Over the River Kwai, The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone.)

In content, the film most resembles Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield’s 1964 The Train, about the French resistance trying to prevent the Germans from taking French artwork to Germany by train.

Yet anyone seeking a great deal of action will be disappointed. Instead, director George Clooney, who also stars in the film, opts for a more natural pace to tell this true story of a group of seven average men — museum curators and art historians — who are enlisted by the military to protect and rescue masterworks that have been stolen by the Nazis.

The film is respectful of the Church, clergy and religious art. In fact, the movie largely focuses on the search for two significant pieces of religious art: Michelangelo’s Carrara marble Madonna of Bruges and Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, which Frank Stokes (Clooney) describes as a “defining monument of the Catholic Church.”

The film opens in the Cathedral of St. Bavo in Ghent, Belgium, as priests are disassembling the altarpiece in an attempt to smuggle it out to safety.

In outlining his reasoning for pulling together the “Monuments Men,” as the group came to be known, to President Franklin Roosevelt, Stokes highlights the near destruction of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper in Milan and shows the president the destruction of St. Benedict’s Abbey at Monte Cassino.

“We need to make sure that David is still standing; that the Mona Lisa is still smiling,” Stokes tells the president.

It’s an engaging and interesting story, even though Clooney doesn’t try to get creative in the telling.

Clooney employs a celebrity-studded cast to tell the story: Matt Damon is James Granger; Bill Murray plays Chicago architect Richard Campbell; John Goodman portrays sculptor Walter Garfield; Jean Dujardin plays Jean Claude Clermont, a French director of design; Cate Blanchett is Claire Simone, a Parisian dedicated to the salvation of art; Bob Balaban is Preston Savitz, the group’s Jewish art historian; and Hugh Bonneville is Donald Jeffries, the group’s connection from England.

The film wastes little time enlisting the men, getting them through basic training and landing them on the shores of Normandy, France.

As the men learn, the Nazis are systematically amassing artwork — where, they do not know — for Hitler’s planned Fuhrer Museum.

In France, they split up, in search of the treasures that have been stolen by Hitler and the Nazis. Granger heads to Paris, while the others head elsewhere to try to learn the whereabouts of other masterworks.

All middle-aged men with families, these men and the sacrifices they make draw the viewer into the story of these unlikely heroes. While they are not typical soldiers, they soon are participating in the activities of soldiers: caring for and comforting the dying, experiencing the loneliness of Christmas away from their families, confronting the horrors of the Holocaust and facing the reality of the mission’s challenges.

In Paris, Granger meets Simone, a French woman enlisted to work at Paris’ Jeu de Paume, cataloging the stolen artwork. Blanchett’s convincing character is based on Rose Valland, a French art expert who was allowed to remain at the Jeu de Paume after the Nazis made it a base for their looting. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, Valland spoke German and was able to keep track of where the works — most stolen from Jewish families — were being stored. The distrustful Simone is unwilling to share this information with Granger because she is concerned that the Americans desire the art for their own museums. Granger must make it clear that they will return the art to its rightful owners, thereby earning Simone’s trust.

The pairing of Balaban and Murray makes for most of the film’s lighter moments. Along the way, some of the Monuments Men lose their lives. One of them (spoiler alert), trying to protect the Madonna of Bruges, writes to his father: “Here, at the foot of our Madonna, I am humbled.”

Their mission is made more urgent when they learn of Hitler’s “Nero Decree,” which stated that, in case he should die or Germany should fall, the artwork was to be destroyed.

“If you can destroy an entire generation of people’s culture, it’s as if they never existed,” says Stokes. “That’s what Hitler wants, and it’s the one thing we can’t allow.”

With time running out, and the Russian army advancing into Germany, the men are forced to move closer to the front. There, they discover the hiding place for much of the priceless artwork.

As director, Clooney chose a more realistic and accurate telling of the story, rather than an over-the-top action-hero movie. In aiming for a fairly straightforward, chronological telling of the tale, it takes some time to draw the viewer in.

Unfortunately, while we appreciate the sacrifices made by the men, we never get to know any of them well enough to come to a complete understanding of what motivates each of them to take on such a mission. A lack of character development is the danger in any ensemble film, and it’s certainly true here.

The big-name actors, in their efforts to play common men, give rather flat performances. The men seem more similar than they do different, and few stand out. The viewers may find themselves filling in for the lack of character development by recalling other similar films in which the actors have played, such as Damon’s The Bourne Identity, Clooney and Blanchette’s The Good German and Murray’s Stripes. If any character rises above the rest, it’s Murray’s. Because of his humor and a moving Christmas scene during the Battle of the Bulge, we’re provided a bit more insight into his character than we receive about the others.

Based on Robert Edsel’s book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, the film’s greatest asset is a captivating, true story that most Americans don’t know but should. Edsel describes it as a story of “people who put on uniforms to save rather than destroy.”

Overall, the film raises difficult questions: Which art is worth saving? Is art worth the loss of a life? What role does art play in culture?

Tim Drake is an award-winning writer and former journalist and radio host

with the National Catholic Register/EWTN. He currently serves as

New Evangelization coordinator for the Holdingford Area Catholic Community

in the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota. He resides with

his wife and five children in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

Caveat Spectator: Language, war violence and historical smoking earn this movie a PG-13 rating.