Continuing with the dual director-actor role that brought him success with The Town (2010), Ben Affleck has hit another home run with Argo, a drama-thriller that recounts the daring CIA-backed rescue of six Americans who managed to escape the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as Iranian militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini stormed the embassy on November 4, 1979, and ended up holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The six Americans who escaped did so without being detected and found refuge at the Canadian Embassy, where they lived in hiding for months. Argo delivers nail-biting suspense and a fascinating declassified history lesson. This is easily one of the year’s best films.
Back in the States, Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA “exfiltration” specialist, gets a call to attend a meeting intended to brainstorm ways to get the six hiding Americans out of Iran before the militants discover them. The meeting goes nowhere. Later, however, Mendez, a heavy drinker separated from his wife and young son, develops a scheme that ends up getting approved as the “best bad idea” the CIA has under such dire circumstances.
The plan is so outlandishly incredible that it’s almost funny. Mendez intends to create a fake production company and movie, fly alone into Tehran, scout filming locations with the six refugees posing as part of the film crew, and then fly home with them out of Tehran’s airport the following day. I know what you’re thinking. It’s impossible! How could the CIA and Carter White House ever approve something that amounted to a suicide mission? The fact that Mendez’s plan received a green-light indicates just how desperate authorities had become in regards to the hostage crisis.
The film’s surprising sense of humor occurs largely during the Hollywood sequences, as Mendez recruits his old buddy and movie makeup master John Chambers (a hilarious and wonderful John Goodman), as well as veteran producer Lester Siegel (an equally enjoyable Alan Arkin), to assist in the creation of the fake production company and film. The team eventually purchases a science fiction script entitled Argo, and they spare nothing creating the illusion that the fake film is real, going so far as to purchase an ad in Variety and staging a public reading of the script with actors in full wardrobe.
Ben Affleck in “Argo.” © 2012 – Warner Bros. Pictures.
The uneasy laughs end as soon as Mendez boards the flight for Tehran. From that point forward you’re on the edge of your seat, rooting for Mendez but knowing deep down that there’s no way he can pull this thing off. This is revolutionary Iran, after all, where the West is the devil and public executions of suspected pro-Western Iranians are common practice. Yet Mendez believes in his plan. He’s never left anybody behind in his career, and he has no intention of starting now. Facing insurmountable odds, he eventually wins over even the most skeptical of the six hiding refugees and convinces them that the impossible is sometimes possible.
Argo is a joy to watch. The film’s attention to detail is impeccable. Jan Pascale’s sets transport you to 1979, and excellent archival footage compliments the 1970s-style cinematography employed by Rodrigo Prieto. The suspense rivals anything you’ve seen in recent years. Although the filmmakers add plenty of fictional elements to make the plot more “Hollywood,” Affleck and crew stay true to the core of a fascinating story that remained classified for nearly twenty years.
