Argo (2012)

I’m always very impressed with people that can keep secrets. I’m astonishingly bad at it myself, and the fact that Argo is based on a true story, one that remained a secret for 15 or so years is astonishing; even more so because it involves America giving credit to another country. Who’d have thought?

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries invaded the American embassy in Tehran. The embassy staff were held hostage for over a year but six managed to escape and hid at the Canadian Ambassador’s house. Argo follows Tony Mendez, a CIA operative as he attempts to rescue these six, under the guise of scouting for locations for his new film: Argo.

Given that Argo is directed by, and starring Ben Affleck, and produced by Ben Affleck and George Clooney (among others), I wasn’t sure what to expect. Many actors like to give directing a go and it’s not always a good move. I’ve not seen The Town or Gone Baby Gone – Affleck’s previous full-length films, but the knowledge that this wasn’t his first foray into direction gave me some confidence. More than his acting sometimes does (Peal Harbour and Gilgli anyone?). To be fair the only reason I haven’t watched either of his previous films is because I just haven’t got around to it yet. And Blake Lively annoys me. And for all I love Casey Affleck after The Killer Inside Me (and, I’ll be honest, Ocean’s Eleven), it’s a bit twee to be employed by your big brother in his first film. Not that I’d say no if it was me.

Suffice to say I will now make watching both The Town and Gone Baby Gone a priority.

With a stellar, but surprising, cast including John Goodman, Tate Donovan, Alan Arkin and Victor Garber, you may spend a decent proportion of Argo going ‘where do I know them from!?’. Try not to worry about that. The plot’s not complicated but its scenes are subtle and the beauty is in the little things. That’s what made me like it. It has the feel of a much smaller film, made by less famous people, in the same way that Good Night and Good Luck did. Perhaps that’s Clooney’s influence. You don’t really find enough about each of the characters to really know them but there’s enough for you to care about them, and prefer that they didn’t get captured and tortured by crazy gun-wielding protesters. By the time they’re trying to escape the country I found myself genuinely nervous, hoping it would all go well and that they’d be ok.

Because it’s not just a film. This really happened. While I’m sure many details have been changed for dramatic effect, the basic narrative of trying to smuggle people out of revolutionary Iran is based on fact. It’s not just a film, and if it all goes tits-up and everyone dies, that’s real people. This really hits home in the credits when the actors’ photos are shown alongside the ID photos of each of the real embassy workers. Some look eerily similar, others not so much. If you weren’t hit by the seriousness of the event before, that’ll do the job for you.

Thumbs-up to the costume people by the way. There were some seriously good 70s/80s clothes, hairstyles and, most importantly, facial hair going on. Christopher Denham in particular looked casually fantastic with his hair and his massive glasses.

I’m not sure how many re-watches Argo could survive, particularly given its slight lull in the middle where I started to lose interest, but it picks up again and I would recommend this film to anyone who likes watching things about real-life events. It just adds that extra something to make Argo really very impressive.