It should have been an effortless performance for a man who has made that word entirely his own in film after film, including a couple directed by himself. Where from then this laborious effort and this creaking film, despite the little-known jewel of a story from the greatest war the planet has seen? The actor-director and co-screenwriter drowns it in not only very cliched characterisations but in very strange and half-hearted flippancy contrasted with amazingly soporific speeches.

It’s only when the monuments men realize that the Nazis have stashed away the art in various mines that the movie belatedly gets going. The fact that Oscar-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael doesn’t deliver a single artistically composed and lit frame to showcase the fabulous paintings being saved, tells you everything you need to know about this shadow of a sketch of the impact of war on art.