Argo (2012)

During his presidency in the mid-90s, Bill Clinton declassified a joint operation between the CIA and the Canadian government in 1980, which extracted six refugees from Tehran during the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the revolution in the country at large. Ben Affleck takes center stage as both lead actor and director of this spell-binding dramatization of one of the most perplexing and thoroughly imaginative CIA operations that I expect the public is aware of.

For a year and a half, some 50-odd hostages were taken from the US embassy in Iran in retaliation for the United States harboring the Shah, who the US government installed in the first place following a coup d'etat in the early-70s. In the confusion of the embassy being stormed and the files being destroyed by workers, six employees managed to escape and were secretly harbored by the Canadian ambassador for three months.

The CIA became immediately involved, but could think of no logical excuse to send in an undercover squad without inciting suspicion of a government completely overrun by anti-American revolutionaries. Affleck plays Tony Mendez, an agent whose job it is to extract people from dangerous situations, something, he tells us, that he is quite good at. Behind his scruff and his quiet intensity is a very clever, audaciously brave man who certainly understands the meaning of "thinking outside of the box".

Using "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" as his inspiration, Mendez seeks the help of movie makeup legend John Chambers (a terrific John Goodman) to help him create a fake sci-fi film to be shot in Iran. Managing to secure the funds from producer Lester Siegel (an Oscar-worthy Alan Arkin), the CIA authorizes that the three men create all of the elements that would go into making a cheesy, alien film--all of which is done knowing full well that the film will never be shot--just to get Mendez into the country and give the six refugees their new identities as film crew members.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is. I suppose truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, and this is certainly one of those cases. Do not let the comedy set-up influence your reasons for seeing the film, though. It is funny, almost surprising so, given the nature of the circumstances and the fact that it is apparently very true to actual events. I have a theory, however, that the humor is peppered in during the film to relieve some of the tension, otherwise it might simply be too unbearably taught.

This is a fantastically suspenseful film; I don't expect that I breathed involuntarily throughout the final thirty minutes of the movie, and judging by the collective sighs from the audience (on multiple occasions) I would say that I wasn't unusually invested in what was going on, and it was simply Affleck's firm grasp of pacing and his exceptional eye for detail that made it a very, very good film.

Certainly, Affleck directs the crap out of this movie. I think it was as good, if not better than his last work, "The Town", which I thought was an exceptional work. It is studded with a great cast, also including Bryan Cranston as a fellow CIA operative and Victor Garber as the Canadian ambassador, not to mention the actors playing the embassy employees who all do tremendous work in their smaller roles. Affleck got a group of people all too ready to go for the ride that he had ready for them, and they tackled the material with extreme force.

I found the beginning of the movie to be a bit shaky, and I'm not particularly convinced that there was any reason to cast himself in the lead role when he gave only an acceptable performance of a character which a million and a half budding actors could have played, but once the movie found its footing and the plot turned away from the Mendez character it worked its way to a fabulous finale. There were moments throughout that definitely show that Affleck is a rising star in the directing world, a man who has a lot of clever ideas and a considerable number of tricks up his sleeve. Expect to see his name come Oscar time--I anticipate it.

3.5/4