"Argo fu@k yourself!"

ARGO (2013)

w- Chris Terrio
d- Ben Affleck
dp- Rodrigo Pietro

Ben Affleck has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he can direct with the best of them. His latest film "Argo" should be the new gold standard on how to script, direct, and edit a thriller, and whip it within and inch of it's life into the tautest, most gripping edge of your seat-er in ages.
In 1979, The U.S. Embassy in Tehran Iran was stormed by militant student revolutionaries, led by the Ayatollah Khomeni, in retaliation for U.S. aid and comfort given to their hated, deposed dictator, Shah Reza Phalavi. 52 U.S. Embassy employees were taken hostage and kept in violent captivity for 444 days, from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981
At the time of the embassy takeover, a small group of six Embassy employees managed to escape the building and find refuge in secret at the Canadian Embassy. There they posed as "guests" of the Canadians and hunkered down to wait for a political resolution to the hostage crisis.
It soon became clear that since they were apart from the Iranian captured hostages and were unknown, they would never be included in an official rescue as the acknowledgement of their existence would endanger the Canadians and the official hostages. So the C.I.A., under the direction of specialist Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) devise a plan to spirit them from Iran. He will go in, posing as a Canadian Movie producer and give them all identities and credentials as part of a movie location scouting party making a crap schlock sci fi film called "Argo". They will receive faked papers and passports, memorize their new identities, and just sashay out of the country with Affleck as their leader. Sound insanely improbable to you? Well be assured, it sounded crazier to them, but it was a real incident, it really happened, and Mendez got special commendation from President Carter himself. The reason why you've never heard of this incident is because the story was classified top secret until just a few years ago.
What Affleck has done is taken the bare bones of the story and embellished it into a compelling movie. The facts are adhered to, but enhancements were made. For example, (spoilers) the airport escape sequence was not nearly as suspenseful in reality. In reality, they got out much more easily. The most tense moment was when the plane was delayed due to technical problems and they had to wait around in suspense. 

Well if you're going to fault Mr. Affleck and Co. for making the scene more interesting, compelling and exciting, then you might just as well fault them for trying to make a movie, as opposed to a documentary. One form requires non embellished truth, and the other begs for exaggeration. God, who wants to listen to someones' true, un-exaggerated account of anything? Spice it up, please!
Acting was uniformly great, and I must cite Alan Arkin's performance as the Hollywood producer enlisted to create the real background for the phony hollywood film. He and John Goodman, who plays famed Hollywood makeup man John Chambers, achieve a comic chemistry that warms and balances out the tension in the film.

Famed 20th Century-Fox makeup Man John Chambers (right) was in fact a long time secret C.I.A. undercover agent who provided the agency's deep cover operatives with alternate identities for ops in East Asia and the Middle East.

If I could change one thing about this film, it's Affleck's casting of himself as Mendez. Although his performance is excellent, I still would've preferred to see an actual Latino/spanish actor who looked a little more like the real Mendez in the role. But that is a minor nit to pick in a film that was so overwhelmingly excellent. I know that when it's released on DVD/BLU-RAY, that I'll be first in line to buy it.

The original poster art for the faked film "Argo" from 1980