ARGO (2012)

I think I always accidentally confused Argo with Fargo and avoided it as a result, due to the adoration so many punk bros I knew had for the latter. I wish I had not waited so long. This film was excellent, and the kind you like to go through later and match up against the historical record – which we did. It was interesting to me that Canadian critics felt the film did not do enough to truly celebrate the pivotal role Canada played in freeing the hostages.

Ben Affleck is pitch perfect as Central Intelligence Agency Operative Tony Mendez, and also directed the film. I imagine of all the stories in the CIA’s history, this one stands out as one of the most breathtaking. It chronicles how the CIA used a fake sci-fi movie as a ruse to rescue hostages from Tehran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis, in which six diplomats were successfully freed. The film was made in 2012, and was met with tremendous critical acclaim.

Even accounting for the inevitable dramatic liberties taken, this is a real stranger-than-fiction tale of a seemingly inane plan to extract six members of the American embassy staff from Tehran. Great movie, even if it did feel like a two hour anxiety episode. I didn’t realize until watching that Ben Affleck directed and produced. I’m so used to seeing him in supermarket tabloids, that it’s easy to forget that he’s a talented guy. 

The oppressive tension of the movie is broken up by Alan Arkin as a Hollywood producer and John Goodman (as the accomplished makeup artist John Chambers) who team up to form a bogus film production company to provide cover for the operation. 

Every few movies we watch, there is something that resonates with what’s going on in the real world. The opening scene of Argo is the well-known takeover of the American embassy. It was unsettling  to watch; it was filmed effectively and knowing it was a real event gave it additional weight. Something else was getting under my skin, though. It took me a while to realize what it was, until I realized we watched this not long after the attempted insurrection at the United States Capital. The dramatized scenes of Tehran in 1979 directly echoed the images from Washington DC in January 2021.