Film Review: Argo

Director: Ben Affleck

Following on from the success of Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Ben Affleck returns as director for this thriller that is loosely based on the work of Tony Mendez during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Affleck also co-produced the movie with George Clooney and assembled an impressive ensemble cast.

By Hollywood standards, this is quite an accurately depicted film of a real life event. You can tell in the early part of the film that Affleck and the producers wanted to make this film reasonably accurate rather than go down the Pearl Harbour route.
*possible spoilers ahead but shouldn't be anything you didn't see in the trailers*

Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston) and Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck)

After a deposed Shah from Iran is allowed asylum in America, the Iran people rebel in the streets of Tehran and storm the US embassy to take the workers hostage so that the US government will return the Shah to face trial. Six workers sneak out of a secret exit and end up on the streets of Tehran so escape being taken hostage but are then forced to stay at the Canadian Ambassadors (Victor Garber) house until they can find a way for them to escape the country.

Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) is in charge of getting them out and uses the idea of making a fake movie as a guise for the 6 workers being in Iran in the hope of getting them out before the Iranians discover they are missing and think they are spys. He hires John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegl (Alan Arkin) as a make-up artist and director respectively to lend credibility to the movie.

The six escapees from the raid on the American Embassy in Tehran

The film is racked with tension that slowly builds as the film develops; the scenes shot on the streets of Tehran look incredibly realistic and intensely claustrophobic. Amongst the tension there is a darkly funny side to this film; Alan Arkin is excellent as the foul-mouthed and cynical movie director. This film is mainly a narrative driven movie with many characters dipping in and out of the plot at different times, this could be a criticism but with such a tight plot that is totally absorbing for the most part it is only a good thing.

The ending is a bit contrived unfortunately as some parts are slightly un-needed and the storyline involving Mendez being estranged from his wife was woefully under-developed that it might as well have just been cut from the film to save 5mins. That is nit-picking though at what is actually a very good movie.

3.5/4 absorbing thriller which is surprisingly accurate to real life