Argo (2012)

Like so many films based on allegedly true stories, how much you enjoy Ben Affleck’s Argo will be directly proportional to your ability to ignore the truth. In fact, it’s probably best you know absolutely nothing about its real-life inspiration going in. Unfortunately this will not be the case for most people, and this film’s tendency to overdramatize history may rub skeptics the wrong way. That’s a shame, because then they’d be missing one of the most compulsively watchable and entertaining Hollywood movies to come out this year. It isn’t the most challenging film, and there aren’t too many surprises, but it’s the kind of grown-up thriller that should be in theaters far more often than not. Argo is the work of a director that has immense faith in himself and the audience, and it provides further proof that Affleck is no fluke. In fact, he could potentially be one of the most naturally gifted filmmakers working today.

Argo opens with a meticulous recounting of the events leading up to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. As the American embassy in Tehran is overrun, six Americans are able to escape and find shelter in the Canadian ambassador’s house. They feel reasonably safe there, but when the walls start to close in the Americans begin a plan to get the six out of the country. This means that one CIA officer named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) must fly in to Tehran, grab them, and fly back out. Unfortunately, Americans aren’t exactly looked upon fondly at the moment. If Mendez is going to go into the lion’s den, he’s going to need a convincing cover.

The solution is a strange one. Mendez flies out to Hollywood to create a fake movie; one that could feasibly involve locations in Iran. He meets up with makeup artist/past CIA partner John Chambers (John Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to create this fake film production, and the script they ultimately settle on is a Star Wars ripoff called Argo. The three work in Hollywood to make the production seems as convincing as possible—they even do a script read for the press—and then Mendez finally heads out to Tehran to round up his faux film crew and bring them back home. All this is under the watchful eye of Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), Mendez’s superior.

One of the hardest things to do in entertainment is create genuine tension, and Affleck deserves a ton of credit for making Argo a prime example of how to escalate tension over two hours. Even when Affleck spends much of the first half of the film out in Hollywood, the threat of capture for the six stranded Americans always looms in the background. There is a wonderful urgency to everything, even if everyone knows it can’t all be solved in just a few hours. You just can’t send James Bond into this situation guns blazing. To execute a mission like this, there needs to be weeks of preparation and the cover must be rock solid and hold up under scrutiny. Argo is a movie that avoids the easy solution, and because we spend so much time with Affleck as he creates the cover we understand just how fragile it all is. It’s a thriller where the stakes actually feel high.

This spectacular direction—and good writing from Chris Terrio—allows the film’s climax to work wonders even in spite of itself. Argo is a spectacular movie, and my only complaint comes toward the end when Affleck decides to lay the tension on perhaps a little too thick. (Anyone familiar with the real story will know that things never quite get this hairy.) There’s a point where it becomes a tad silly, and Argo walks right up to that line and threatens to cross it. Thankfully it’s all so well done that the camel’s back never quite breaks. We’re already so invested in the events of the film that it’s hard to complain when it tries to pull us in further. It’s hard not to go along for the ride.

It’s almost hard to articulate what makes Argo so good. As I said before, it’s not exactly the kind of film that will haunt your dreams, but it still leaves an impressive impact. It really is just a great story told in superior fashion, and like the extraction mission at its center it is the result of a total team effort. Affleck may be the director and star, and his character may be the most important figure, but he is not the only reason that everything works out. It sounds incredibly cheesy when you write it out, but Argo is an impossibly entertaining tribute to what can be accomplished when people are assigned a job and they work together to execute it to perfection. When that happens, you may just be able to get a group of Americans out of a revolutionary country. Or you could just make a great movie

Grade: A-