Argo - Affleck directs another good film

On Friday evening last week my housemates were all doing their own thing, many of my other friends were away and so I took an impulse decision to cycle up to Winnersh to the Showcase and watch a film I had heard warmly reviewed by Mayo and Kermode in their interview with Ben Affleck the previous week. The film was Argo, the latest directed by Affleck. The cinema was nowhere near full, though the entire teenage female population of East Berkshire appeared to be queueing to see the latest (and last - I'm very pleased to be informed) instalment of Twilight. Plus there were a good number of women who looked old enough to know better really - though it's unlikely they read this blog so it probably wont help if I post this article about the self-misogyny implicit in the Twilight series.

Anywaaay...

...The story of Argo is a dramatisation of the real life rescue of 6 American Embassy workers during the US / Iran Hostage crisis of 1979. When the US embassy was stormed, these 6 managed to escape and found themselves at the Canadian embassy without any Iranians knowing they were there. The Canadians and the CIA then came up with a plan to get the 6 out of the country, a plan that involved a rather audacious cover story. The idea was to invent a Holywood film production, then send a CIA agent to Tehran to pretend that he was the Canadian executive producer on a location scouting tour of the Middle East. He would then give 6 fake Canadian passports to the embassy workers and walk out of the country with them in tow.

It's a story that's so audacious you wouldn't believe it was true, but it appears to be. The fake film - Argo - was brought into being and the plan set into action. Though what happens in the end is a matter of historical fact I wont give it away since you've probably never heard of it before. The real film called Argo - this film - is part historical drama, part action and part comedy in which criticisms are aimed at the Holywood elite, the CIA and the Islamification of the Iranian revolution. The film starts with a short introduction to the USA's involvement in Iranian politics since the 1950s, deftly pointing out that the US was far from an innocent bystander in the events that took place in that nation in 1979. But this is a film that restrains itself from doing any preachy liberal finger-waving, instead telling the story of this unlikely rescue - albeit from an American point of view - while making sure that we know the historical context.

It's a bit silly how they end the film.  The film goes down the ticking time bomb route where at each checkpoint at Tehran airports someone at the CIA / Holywood does something at the very last moment to thwart the Iranian authorities unveiling the true identities of the 'Canadians'.  Though it generates suspense, this stuff never happens in real life - and indeed it never happened in this real life story.  Bit of a shame as all that does is add to the plethora of propaganda out there in film and TV normalising the ticking time bomb spy scenario in the mind of the public - 24 anyone?

Argo is a fun film with comedy, suspense, John Goodman hamming it up, good one-liners and a bit of "Am-er-ica: fuck yeah!" thrown in at the end.  Another bonus was that it stars a bunch of people from US TV series who I've never seen do anything else.  Clea Duvall was the disappearing girl Marcie Ross from way back in season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Tate Donovan was Tom in Damages, Victor Garber was Sidney's Dad in Alias - it's a spot-the-TV-actor-athon!

With this and The Town on his CV, Ben Affleck is becoming a promising director.  Also his acting isn't bad either - double plus bonus for him and us alike!