Based-on-a-true-story filmaking at its finest!

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2013)

The often-ridiculed future The Batman Ben Affleck deservedly picked up an Academy Award for Best Film for a suspenseful retelling of a complex rescue operation during the Iranian Revolution. Much like Ron Howard's "Apollo 13" the movie builds far more audience anxiety about how the story ends than any event that actual happened and can be pulled up on Wikipedia has a right to. Between these films, Argo stands as the superior accomplishment given the degree of difficulty. The complexity of the times portrayed and the number of conflicting constituencies involved in the story could have easily turned this into a morass of indecipherable political intrigue. Yet Affleck keeps the parties and their motivations straight in the minds of the audience. Casting choices add strongly to the entertainment value particularly the always fascinating Bryan Cranston, John Goodman and Allan Arkin. The proceedings go a little long but this adds to the eventually drama around whether all the pieces would come together to get the six hostages out of the country rather than being hung from construction equipment. In short, the most deserved Best Picture winner since "Michael Clayton" in '08 (I didn't say Michael Clayton won, I said it deserved to).