Historical Accuracy of Argo

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2018)

The movie takes place in late 1979, and Iranian revolutionaries took over Iran from the dictatorship of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who came to power with help of the United States. Following that, Iranian revolutionaries invaded the United States' embassy in Tehran. Six officials from the embassy escaped, and found sanctuary at the Canadian ambassador's residence in Tehran. To save the hostages the CIA hires agent Tony Mendez to create a plan to rescue the six escaped officials. His plan, to have the six escaped officials pose with canadian passports, in a hollywood film crew in iran to scout locations.
The setting of the movie is completely true. The United States did help the Shah to take power in 1953. Many reasons led to the hatred of Shah and then to the Iranian revolution. Issues included the Shah's Autocratic rule, corrupt government, and use of a brutal secret police force. Hatred of the Shah was widespread t among the lower class, Shiite Muslims, and other groups that joined together to move the country towards a revolution.
Many pieces of historical inaccuracy take place in several scenes where the scenes added or dramatised in order to make the movie more entertaining. One way we learned this is that the CIA gave briefings on fact vs. fiction in the movie via Twitter. For instance, the movie shows CIA agent Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, going into Iran and extract the six officials as part of his "film crew." Mendez set up a cover story that they were working on a film called "Argo". Affleck, seen as a extremely diligent, and dedicated CIA agent, was sent into Iran by himself, working without any other assistance in the country. But in reality there were two CIA agents sent into Iran to pull off the plan. The movie showed only one agent, apparently to simplify the plot line, but in reality, the thought of lone agent Tony Mendez bringing off the escape of the six officials is false.
Also, another historical accuracy of the movie, as tweeted by the CIA, is the scene where the officials and Mendez go scouting locations. It is a very intense scene at a marketplace in Tehran, where suspense builds up, and where there's a potential for the escape plan to be foiled. However, this scene never happened. According to the CIA, the six officials and the CIA agent never went to the marketplace. The CIA says they all stayed in the residence of the Canadian official for 79 days, and never left to pretend to scout locations.
One more obviously inaccurate scene is the final escape on the plane, which is being chased by police cars, and iranian armed forces. This invention is obvious, as any vehicle attempting to drive side by side to a Swissair DC 8-62 wouldn't stand a chance. As the power behind its four Pratt & Whitney engines would easily blow the vehicles away, if they were even close to keeping up with the plane. Commercial airliners are traveling upward of 150 miles per hour when they take off.
In addition, one of the most intense, sit up in your seats, nail biting, and eyes-on-the-screen scenes, arguably the climax of the movie, where the plane tickets are not at the counter, furthering the rechecking of tickets and the authorization, never happened. In reality, according to the CIA, there were no issues at the checkpoints or the ticketing counter. And the intense scene when Iranian security calls the movie studio, to verify that there actually was a movie being made, is also fabricated. The flight, an early morning flight, was so early that the workers would be tired and the guards would be sleeping. There were no complications.
The film also doesn't show Canada's involvement. Canada was much more involved as the movie depicted. David Haglund, in an article on Slate.com, said the film was "downplaying the actual extent of Canadian involvement, which was considerable." As seen in the movie the only real credit given to Canada was the housing of the six officials.
To conclude, the movie was very effective in stimulating the viewers' emotions and creating heart racing scenes. I don't view that as deception, because this is a work of entertainment. While the film can be criticized for its accuracy, it's much harder to criticize the film's ability to get our hearts racing, and keep us engaged