With his third feature Ben Affleck is fast approaching the status of must-see director. His latest film Argo is an entertaining depiction of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of Iran.
Wearing a scruffy beard and mustache, Affleck plays CIA agent Tony Mendez, who goes into Iran under the guise of being a film producer who is shooting a movie with a “Canadian” film crew (comprised of the six Americans). Sneaking them out won’t be easy — none of them has a smidgen of film experience and only one speaks a lick of the native tongues.
The ending, like any based on a true story film, is predetermined. In Titanic, you knew the ship would sink. Argo’s, ending is similarly predestined, first by history and second by the commonsense understanding that any Hollywood film featuring Americans being defeated by a foreign country would never make it out of development.
We play the will they or won’t they (make it out) game, following the CIA Agent Tony Mendez (Affleck) and the six Americans through their get-out-of-Iran-safe ploy.
The story is an emotional tug for those who see innocent Americans trapped in a foreign country and want to see them safely home. But the portrayal of Iranians is not so empathetic. The American context of the film is fully espoused, but the film doesn’t explore why the Iranians were so angry and why they would want to harm Americans. Subsequently, we’re unable to make our own informed decisions about the context of the turmoil in order to assess the accuracy of the portrayals of Iranians as angry and irrational.
For that matter, I can’t say that it is the most historically accurate movie that can be made on the subject, but it brings an American-sympathetic eye to the story of those hostages and the CIA agent. John Goodman and Alan Arkin also add humor to the story as Hollywood types holding down the fort of the fake operation.
Several reasons suggest that Argo could be in line for a coveted Academy Award. Argo ups the ante of previous Affleck flicks The Town (2010) and Gone Baby Gone (2007) with a based on a true story drama that also contends with serious political upheaval.
Like Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008), the film benefits from well-timed political relevance. In this case, the recent events in Libya and the Anti-American attacks and protests outside U.S. embassies across the world lend credence to Argo’s premise. Argo, if only for two hours, diverts our minds to envision a sense of closure to this unrest.
The film also sheds light on Hollywood’s involvement in the fake movie scheme that stayed under wraps for over 20 years. Films that reminisce upon Hollywood’s past seem to have a good chance at nabbing an Oscar or two. (Ask The Artist.)
No stranger to the Academy Awards, Affleck has already won an Oscar along with Matt Damon for the screenplay Good Will Hunting (1997). Now with
‘Argo’ Trailer
Affleck discusses a scene
‘Argo’ Preview with Affleck
Director: Ben Affleck
Writer: Chris Terrio
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman
Ben Affleck is turning out to be a Hollywood director to watch. But, I detest his little sprinkled dialogue here and there about black folk.
Ben is better director and actor of his own films than he’s an actor in films he doesn’t direct.