Funny how it's always about oil

Rating: 10/10 (6 November 2012)

An excellent film, with more tension than the Golden Gate Bridge ;) The tone was set early on with the historical context, showing how the west created the circumstances that led to the Revolution in the first place, by installing the Shah and then supporting him irrespective of the human rights violations in his country (of which he claimed no knowledge, as the film shows). The filming of the protects and siege of the embassy were very realistic - at some points I thought they were using original footage.
Being of an age where I remember the events quite vividly, knowing Iranians with family back in Iran and Brits working there at the time, the film brought all that back to life for me. I didn't need the events around the actual escape spiced up (as Affleck has admitted) as the tension was already there. Just having the housemaid quizzed at the gate showed the tension and menace graphically enough for me. The scene in the spice market showed the chaotic mayhem that existed at that time in the country - no one was really in charge, anyone could take it upon themselves to exercise a bit of revolutionary action of their own.
I would recommend this to anyone who wants to get a true feeling about what such an event is like, including the psychological impact on those involved. One wonders about the Revolutionary Guards who slipped up that day - did they make it or was an example made of them? It shows that whenever you have an upheaval in a country - just as in the more recent Arab Spring events - the outcomes are very uncertain and the forces unleashed are almost uncontrollable.