Ben Affleck’s Argo Will Inundate Your Cardiovascular System
At first, I thought I was watching a Stan Lee comic on
screen as the opening included a rather colorful presentation of the history surrounding
the Iranian revolution, with actual photos and drawings mimicking the artwork
style of a Superman or Batman art strip. It works. It’s a different method of
recalling historical information that would engage people ranging from toddlers
to grandfathers (not that toddlers should watch a rated R movie anyway).
Argo is a movie about a covert CIA operation to extricate 6
US embassy workers stranded in Iran during the 1979 revolution, in which the
Iranian revolutionists stormed the US embassy, creating a hostage crisis. The
aforementioned 6 individuals manage to evaporate from the embassy premises,
only now needing to be rescued by their fellow countrymen, who decide to enter
Iran as a phony film crew.
The movie elevates your pulse rate from the very beginning,
starting with the embassy siege. Seeing a handful of Americans trapped in a
building with a thousand people engulfing the vicinity, growing restless and
more hostile by the minute is enough to create a fountain of piss down one’s
pants. Witnessing the indecision among the 6 Americans, whether to leave the
building or hope that the walls and windows withstand the invasion, also swells
the viewer’s anxiety. To draw a comparison, this is Helms Deep on Earth,
grounded in reality where revolutionists use their guns and batons as battering
rams against the doors. This was the perfect way to start the movie and the
tone of unease and trepidation last consistently till the film’s last minute.
When not busy emptying the viewer’s bladder of bodily
fluids, Argo strikes a reverberant echo of sentiment in the most ideal moments.
A standout scene was where three locations were simultaneously shown in intermittent
transmissions, the public unveiling of the fake movie’s (named Argo) script in
Hollywood, an Iranian press conference to declare all American embassy workers
spies, and the 6 Americans in their temporary sanctuary watching the news centered
on them. They were 3 completely disparate venues yet all bound by the same
purpose and meaning. Getting the Hollywood script reading’s dialogue to echo
the situation in Iran was ingenious, this strategy magnified by the ideal choice
of background music.
Yet, one surprise to me was Alan Arkin. He was nominated for
best supporting actor at the Oscars, but appeared only in a handful of scenes. I’m
not trying to discredit his role, which was portrayed to good effect in 2
scenes in particular, but more on-screen time would have justified the
nomination. On the topic of characters, I felt that there was no great room for
any development. And this is strength of the movie rather than a weakness.
While Ben Affleck plays the unruffled and purposeful CIA agent with John
Goodman and Alan Arkin as the Hollywood aficionados making the fake script,
none decided to steal the spotlight. The attention is only on the story, this
operation, this great escape set in the Iranian Revolution, and this is an
obligation given the magnitude this period of history had. Argo encapsulates
this iota of the past profoundly.
Argo Trailer.
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