ARGO (2012)

An Outstanding Thriller of International Turmoil

Grade: A

**Spoiler Alert!**

When it comes to saving lives in foreign lands, there’s no business like show business.

At least that’s the basic idea for Argo, the Oscar-winning slow-burn thriller centered on the 1979-1981 Iran Hostage Crisis. Directed and coproduced by, and starring Ben Affleck, Argo’s premise-smuggling six Americans out of a hostile Iran by disguising them as a movie crew-may seem a touch silly until one realizes that it is based on actual events. Despite containing a few clichés in its final third, Argo is still an incredible story about how the determination of a few people in Hollywood and Langley overcame the odds.

Since Argo is based on a true story, it only makes sense that the lines between good and bad are blurred early on when some opening narration reveals that a coupe by the United States led to the rise of the Shah, an eccentric and cruel monarch who ruled Iran with an iron fist. The film sets its tone with a well-edited and intense opening sequence where a mob of vengeful Iranians storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and take hostages, demanding that President Jimmy Carter return the Shah, who had taken asylum in the U.S. after being replaced. Six embassy members manage to escape during the chaos and find refuge at the Canadian ambassador’s house. As the world watches the crisis, the CIA struggles to come up with a plan to safely extract the six from Iran.

While watching part of a Planet of the Apes film on TV after a phone conversation with his science fiction-loving son, CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck) comes up with an audacious plan: create a fake science fiction movie, pretend the six are Canadian members of the crew scouting locations in Iran, and then fly them out of the country at the airport. He gains the help of makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and film producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) in Hollywood in fabricating a Star Wars knockoff called Argo and even assembles a recorded script reading to add to its authenticity. Despite some resistance from the skeptical U.S. government, Mendez soon sets out for Iran to get the embassy members and bring them home.

With Argo, director Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio successfully make the audience root for the characters as each of the main players come across as likeable and work together to try to accomplish the mission. There is an ever-mounting sense of suspense and dread throughout the film, creating multiple obstacles for Mendez, the CIA and the six. Some of the escapees are doubtful of the plan’s success and the pieces of shredded documents containing their images are being reassembled by revolutionaries. These people are trapped in a country full of people who hate their nation, and as they are traveling through a marketplace as part of the plan, the looks of dread on their faces add to the intensity. Things escalate when the American government shuts down the mission in favor of a military rescue of the hostages, so Mendez decides to go rogue.

The tension reaches its boiling point at the airport as Mendez and the escapees go through a series of checkpoints to reach their plane. The film switches scenes between the airport, the CIA headquarters (where Mendez’s friend Jack O’Donnell races against time to re-validate the cover story and refugees’ flight out), Hollywood (where Chambers tries to reach his office and answer the phone when the revolutionaries at the airport call him to verify the escapees’ story), and the building where revolutionaries finally determine the identities of the six. These parallel actions make the suspense almost Hitchcockian in nature. But the story also allows for a bit of humor amid the dread when one of the six describes the fake movie to the revolutionaries and makes goofy sound effects to simulate the laser weapons; after they depart, the revolutionaries look over the fake concept art and make the sound effects themselves.

Despite its merits, Argo contains some story elements that have become very familiar in thrillers like this. When the government shuts down the mission, we can immediately deduce that Mendez is going to go ahead with it anyway. And the revolutionaries’ mad dash to stop the plane after they learn the truth seems like it was lifted from some other movie as well.

But these clichés do little to undermine Argo’s overwhelming success. Just about everything else about it is done right; the actors provide vivid and convincing performances, the script tells a great story, and Affleck shines both behind and in front of the camera. Argo is an effective, entertaining and immensely satisfying thriller that deserved all the accolades and success it received when it was released.

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Director: Ben Affleck

Producers: Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Grant Heslov

Screenplay: Chris Terrio (Based on The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez, and "The Great Escape: How the CIA used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" by Joshuah Bearman)

Cast: Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez), Bryan Cranston (Jack O'Donnell), Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel), John Goodman (John Chambers), Tate Donovan (Robert Anders), Clea DuVall (Cora Amburn-Lijek), Christopher Denham (Mark Lijek), Scoot McNairy (Joe Stafford), Kerry Bishe (Kathy Stafford), Rory Cochrane (Lee Schatz), Victor Garber (Ken Taylor), Kyle Chandler (Hamilton Jordan)

Rated: R (for language and some violent images)