Argo

Argo (2012)
Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman

Director: Ben Affleck

 

This years nominees for Best Picture for the Academy Awards were an odd bunch. I must admit that I had only seen one of them and knew very little about the others.

This one, while I thought I'd get around to it one day, didn't really peak my interest, until it won for Best Picture.

Based on the true story of Tony Mendez, an expert in exfiltration working with the CIA is called in to rescue 6 Americans who managed to escape the take over of the American Embassy in Iran in 1979.

From the very beginning, this is a gripping movie. I thought I would be a bit bored in parts, but the opening sequence, showing the past history of the leaders or Iran and how they rose and fell really sets up what you're in for with this movie.

Tony (played by a very hairy Ben Affleck) enlists the help of some friends in the movie industry, specifically a make up artist who has close contacts in the industry. They devise a plan to promote a movie called Argo, an intergalactic love story, that doesn't actually exist. They use the movie to build up fake identities for the six Americans who are stranded in the house of the Canadian Ambassador in Iran after having escaped when the embassy was overthrown. Tony decides that they are a film crew scouting locations for the new film and spends weeks building up a movie that will never be made, all in order to get the six home safely.

Fantastic acting, especially from Ben Affleck, who also directed the movie, and Alan Arkin.

This was a well deserved win for Ben and the crew and I hope he makes more of this calibre.