Argo (***½)

Directed by: Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber

Seen: February 9^th 2013

***½ Out of ****

I truly enjoy a good thriller, and if the thriller can pull of a daring high-stakes heist/escape it gets even better. When the thriller can then do all that without gunfire and tense action it goes beyond impressing me. Argo is one such movie in a landscape where such movies, especially ones that work so well, rarely show up, if ever. Ben Affleck is once again flexing his creative muscle, and he keeps strengthening the argument for him after a few years of “falling behind”, so to speak. After co-writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, and winning the Oscar for it, he kept working in Hollywood, sometimes to not so good effect, for years. But with his first two directorial efforts, the excellent The Town and now the brilliant Argo, he is definitely soaring.

Argo is a recreation of true events from November 1979 to January 1981. After the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the much more conservative Islam under Ayatollah Khomeini, a group of Islamist activists took over the American Embassy in Tehran. In the chaos and confusion of the takeover, six diplomats managed to escape after shredding a substantial amount of potentially sensitive embassy documentation. The six escapees manage to make their way to the home of the Canadian Ambassador (Garber) in Tehran, where they can only stay for a limited time before the Iranians gets news of their escape as they have scores of children rebuilding the shredded documentation from the embassy.

Meanwhile in the USA Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA exfiltration specialist, is brought in for consultation on ideas for getting the diplomats safely home. Stumped, he returns home for the evening, where his son watches Battle for the Planet of the Apes, which inspires a plan, one so crazy that it just might work. When he takes the plan to his manager, Jack O’Donnell (Cranston), he is at first met with derision, but upon discussing things – the plan is approved. Mendez and O’Donnell approach Hollywood make-up artist and previous CIA collaborator John Chambers (Goodman), who in turn takes them to film producer Lester Siegel (Arkin), and together they start planning for the movie Argo – which they will film in Iran. The plan is to go and scope out locations in Iran, meet up with the rest of their film-crew (the 6 escapees), and return home with everyone in tow – with documentation to prove that they all only arrived recently too.

This creates a set-up for a lot of tension and even a small amount of stress-out comedy, or rather amusement, as Chambers and Siegel must assist with the authenticity of the mission as Mendez himself goes to Iran to save the diplomats. The acting and direction are both superb and the viewer is drawn into a rich and enjoyable story of a group of normal people taking on long odds in a very hostile environment. Every moment of the movie feels completely authentic, and this is strengthened by end credits comparing actual archive news footage/photographs with scenes from the movie.

Argo is intensely tense and highly enjoyable escapism, pun intended. Rarely will a movie with this little action and gunfire keep you on the edge of your seat like Argo does. Ben Affleck tells a masterful story of bravery and calculated risk-taking that will capture anyone’s imagination. Argo is a great movie.