Argo

Ben Affleck who originally got acclaim for his collaboration with best bud Matt Damon on Good Will Hunting, went out gloriously alone and came back with a Best Picture Oscar for Argo, the story of one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated in the last century or even in the short time this century has been around. I'm sure Matt Damon would love to have had a piece of this one.

Based on writings of CIA operative Tony Mendez who engineered the escape of six American diplomats who were lucky enough to get out of Iran during the Ayatollah Khomeini craziness during the Iran hostage crisis, Affleck who sports a heavy beard that makes him totally unrecognizable as Affleck, but no doubt Mendez had such a growth. Only the voice lets you know from time to time that it is Affleck.

Our protagonist has a history of pulling off good intelligence coups and he's given an assignment by his superiors. When they learn that the American diplomats are hiding at the Canadian ambassador's home he has to devise a scheme to get them out. He's one of several people put on this problem. His solution is to appeal to the Iranian's sense of celebrity. Affleck creates the cover story of a movie being shot in Iran, a science fiction spectacular like Star Wars and these folks were there scouting locations in the desert. Hollywood contacts John Goodman and Alan Arkin were most helpful, their sense of Hollywood hyperbole comes in handy. In fact both make several jokes about the movie capital. Arkin got a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Of course we know what happened. I remember the news breaking that the Canadians had gotten these diplomats out who should have been hostages along with the others. The Iranians huffed and puffed and vowed divine retribution on Canada for aiding the Great Satan. It all came to naught however.

Argo which is the title of the pretend science fiction epic so far represents the summit of Ben Affleck's career. Why he did not get nominated for Best Actor and Director is quite beyond me if the Academy thought the film that good. Now that the story is declassified we now see that the CIA can occasionally get it right.

Argo is the political thriller based on the 1979 Iranian hostage situation in which 6 Americans were left to fend for themselves in the centre of Tehran. CIA Operative Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck) is sent into Iran to evacuate the Americans out safely under the cover of being a film production crew working on a picture called 'Argo'.

The film is absolutely amazing and definitely one of the best films I've seen in a long time, throughout 2012 and 2013 so far we have been treated with some great films such as Skyfall, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty and more, but in my own personal opinion Argo takes the bait as the best of them all. Proof is present as it won 3 BAFTA's for best picture, best director and best editing, also nominated for a further 8 Oscars in 85th Academy Awards.

The film is packed with a sense of threat, peril and intensity all portrayed exceptionally well through the ensemble cast including Ben Affleck (The Town), John Goodman (Big Lebowski), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Alan Arkin (Edward Scissorhands) and Victor Garber (Titanic). The ending is by far the most intense ending I have seen in a long time, visually presented in such an astounding way.

Director Ben Affleck started out his auteur career after his directional debut Gone Baby Gone became critically acclaimed, three years later The Town came out with an Oscar nomination. Now 2 years on we have Argo, Affleck's best film by far.

Honestly, I came into this movie with so-so expectations as the trailer I saw in a different movie made me give myself a 50% chance to watch it, up in the air if you will. But from the moment the movie began up until the end, I was gripping for the characters the whole way, the way movies should be.

The opening of the movie played a huge part in setting the tone of the rest of the film. As I had no history or prior knowledge to the events that transpired in Iran in the 1980s, the brief amount of a history lesson was just enough to maintain my interest. Throughout the film, there are times when I might have started to wander through long bouts of dialog, but witty comments by the characters kept me entertained. By the time the climax was about to hit, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, biting at my fingers, awaiting their next move.

Well done Ben, well done.

Ben Affleck continues hitting them out of the park. Based on a true story, Argo re-enacts the events that freed American foreign service employees from their hideout in the Canadian Embassy. The setup involves Affleck's character, Mendes, putting together the cover story of a Canadian film crew scouting locations in the Mideast for a sci-fi movie. Alan Arkin & John Goodman are hilarious as Hollywood hotshots producing this surefire scifi hit. The process follows Mendes as he enters Iran and has to BS his way to some skeptical and hostile Iranian theocrats who almost don't know how to respond to the possibility of a scifi movie set in Iran. Mendes must also deal with frightened and reluctant Americans who are being forced out in the open to pose as a movie crew. Affleck does a good job of injecting suspense and dread all through this section.

But the real nail biter is their exit from Iran. As in other movies of this ilk, the chase heats up with the Iranians on the heels of the Americans. Affleck throws into this chase a huge boulder of an obstacle when President Carter pulls the plug on the film crew ex-filtration & decides to go with Delta soldiers instead. If you want to know what happens, I advise you to see the movie or read the news accounts.

This just goes to show you that not all CIA covert actions are led by armed fighters like Jason Bourne and launched by the Treadstone department. Affleck's character doesn't even carry a gun--he carries a script instead.

Argo interested me not only because it was rather breathlessly discussed by critics when it came to "best film of 2012" time, but also because it was a true story that I knew nothing about – from detail to the ending it was all news to me. Watching it I still took it with a pinch of salt simply because I think it is wrong to approach any fictionalized version of a true story and assume that it is entirely gospel. The film walks a fine line between the dramatic and the absurd, almost to the point where if you left the cinema during one scene and then returned during another, you would be forgiven for thinking you'd come back into the wrong screen. It does this but yet it mostly pulls it off.

The film opens with an American embassy in Iran being stormed and the majority of people taken hostage, except a small group who flee to the home of the Canadian Ambassador and are hidden. The story is then about the extradition of this small group, before the Iranians work out that they are missing and hunt them down; with options limited, the plan is to send an agent into Iran posing as someone scouting for locations for a movie – and then leave the country with the small group acting as his colleagues and peers. This involves doing more than saying it out loud as it has to pass muster with the Iranians – so the CIA works with a Hollywood writer and a producer to greenlight a film, sell it to the press and take their small production into Iran. In telling the story the film pretty much plays it straight and allows the scenario to be whatever it is – so when it is a press junket then it is amusingly absurd but while it is in an Iranian airport it is really tense and the stakes are apparent. This approach works pretty well because it lets the film have these extremes alongside one another without one undercutting the other. The downside is that it does occasionally mean that the telling feels quite "ordinary" as it lacks an individual voice to the delivery – not boring by any means, but just surprisingly straight in the telling.

This can be seen in the cast because mostly there are not really characters here, since the film focuses on events and doesn't leave a lot of time for the people (understandably). Affleck doesn't really work in the lead and I'm not sure why he cast him; he is OK but his presence is not all it needed to be in such a straight film. The various hostages in Iran don't really make an impression beyond them being just that, but there is color provided by solid turns from Goodman, Cranston, Arkin and a few others. As director Affleck does a good job to make the mix of content work so well, but the real credit to the production is how of the period it feels – there is nothing that really seems out of place, from office to street it feels like it was filmed back in the late 70s.

Argo is an effective and engaging story that works partly because the telling is straight enough to let the events be however they are (absurd, tense, whatever). However this straight bat does also limit the film by making it feel a little ordinary in the delivery, without much flair or individual style to the telling, even if the attention to period is really well done.