Argo has a great
one-liner that I want to quote to you right now, but can’t. It means good luck,
Godspeed, farewell and “get outta my face” all at once. It’s too crude for most
newspapers. After you see Argo, which
I highly encourage, mutter the line to yourself as you leave. You’ll know which
line I’m referring to; it’s unmistakable. [As you can tell, this was written for a newspaper. The line is, "Argo fuck yourself."]
Argo is a masterfully
made spy-thriller, one of the best. It’s based on a true story, one that I knew
the ending of before the movie started, but it still had me going, winding me
tighter and tighter, ratcheting the tension with each new twist, and then
hurtling my expectations ever faster toward certain doom. Your fingernails will
never forgive you.
In 1979, a mass of protestors stormed the American embassy in Iran , taking 52
hostages. Unbeknownst to the hostages, the Iranians and the American public,
six embassy workers escaped the compound and made their way to the Canadian
ambassador’s personal residence, where they hid in fear they would be
discovered and gunned down in the street.
Once word landed at the State Department and the CIA, the two
agencies began planning the Americans’ exfiltration, or exfil, from Iran . One plan
was to have the six pose as teachers even though there were no American
teachers left in Iran .
Another plan had them as agriculture researchers, but never mind the snow on
the ground. One wacky plot involved bicycles. And if they don’t know how to
ride bikes? “We’ll send someone in to teach them.” One operative suggests they
“mail them training wheels and meet them at the border.”
This operative is Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) and he’s thinking way
outside the box, but not the box office. He suggests the CIA set up a fake
studio making a fake movie that may need some location shooting in Iran . Tony can
travel into Tehran ,
pretend to be a movie producer and then fly out with his “film crew.” The CIA,
hesitant at first, gives the green light, which was fortunate because Iran had a
small army of children and women re-assembling shredded American documents that
could prove that some Americans had not been captured in the initial embassy
raid. Time was running very short.
Tony jets off to Hollywood
to enlist a producer (Alan Arkin) and a friend, makeup and prosthetic designer
John Chambers (John Goodman). They create a theater of absurdity to give
credibility to the deception: they host a cast reading for the media, they
decorate an office, create storyboards and eventually land a spread in Variety. The fake movie is called Argo and it’s a science-fiction adventure
film in the spirit of Star Wars from
two years earlier.
Eventually, Tony gets into Iran using a Canadian passport and
he makes his way to the six embassy workers, but I will let you discover the
rest of the plot. I encourage you to read the history behind this “Canadian
Caper,” as it was called, but only do so after
you see Argo. I would hate for it to
spoil the surprises. And speaking of history, stay through the credits to see
frame comparisons from the movie versus the real events. It’s remarkable how
accurate some of the images are. Also, President Jimmy Carter — who likely lost
his re-election bid because of the long Iran hostage crisis — shares some
personal memories of the events.
Oscar season’s first pitch and Ben Affleck’s brazen spy thriller
knocks it out of the park. I’m talking way
out of the park. Over the Green Monster, over Lansdowne, over the Massachusetts Turnpike.
You won’t ever see that ball again. This is a supremely well made movie, with
lots of moving parts and speaking roles, yet it never loses its focus or its
momentum.
Affleck has a careful eye for details, and his decision to give
the film a vintage ’70s-movie look was appropriate. The film stock even looks
old and yellow. He also knows how to frame and direct tension, which is difficult
to do because it means winding up the audience at just the right speed. Too
slow and the momentum fizzles and the risks evaporate; too fast and it feels
phony. The thrills here sequence up at just the right moments, creating a
steady flow of jittery gasps, including some when a van’s gears grind and slip,
or when Iranian security calls the fake Hollywood
office and no one picks up.
I should also point out that the film does an admirable job explaining why the Iranians were so upset. Some of this done in the opening credits by using storyboards depicting the Shah of Iran and other figures, but then other bits are done within the film as televisions show Iranians explaining their demands and as characters discuss the Shah's extradition from the United States back to Iran to face the Iranian people. By no means is this a complete history of the era, but it's enough to give the Iranians their own purpose other then "they're the bad guys."
The cast is another home run, Arkin and Goodman especially. They
spend much of the movie together, and their chemistry is perfect. They also
have lots of Hollywood inside gags: “Negotiate
with Iran ?
That’s nothing. Try the Writers Guild of America ?!” Zing! Arkin says the line I can’t quote, and I hope he risks an FCC
fine to say it during his Oscar speech.
In an ironic twist, the weakest link might be Affleck — actor
Affleck, not director Affleck — because he fails to play up to the level of his
co-stars. Arkin and Goodman outdo him easily, but so do small performances by
Bryan Cranston, Victor Garber, character actor Zeljko Ivanek and Clea DuVall,
who I was delighted to see acting in such a delicate role as one of the embassy
workers. Affleck’s performance isn’t bad, it’s just flat compared to the rest
of the cast.
That being said, let me reiterate how impressive Affleck’s Argo is: It is easily one of the best
films I’ve seen this year. You’ll bite your nails, hold your breath and scratch
at your armrest. And then when you get home, you can do it all over again when
you read the real story.
NOTE: I'm really liking the press still for this movie, so I'm posting almost all of them. All are clickable. More after the jump.
