Do They Make It Out Alive? You're Seriously Wondering!

Rating: 8/10 (12 October 2012)

Argo is not itself a science-fiction film. Really, it's not even about the making of a science- fiction film. Yet that's the cover story that Ben Affleck's character, CIA exfiltration specialist Antonio Mendez, comes up with as a ruse to smuggle 6 American embassy workers out of Iran during the 1978-79 hostage crisis. The 6 had been holed up incognito in the residence of the Canadian ambassador, but the Revolutionary Guard was closing in on them, and the CIA was just about out of options. Indeed, at one point they claim they are out of options and are going to let the hostages take their chances, but Mendez bulls on thru anyway.
It's axiomatic in undercover work that you may hear about the failures, but nobody ever talks about the successes. Indeed, it wasn't until a couple of decades later, in 1997, that President Clinton authorized the declassification of the Argo story (or "The Hollywood Option", as it's code-named in the movie).
Yes, the oft-abused phrase "based on a true story" seems to be much closer to accurate here. Period detail is spot-on, nowhere more evident than in the side-by-side shots under the closing credits of the actors alongside contemporary photos of the real-life State Department workers they portray. There is palpable tension among the sequestered comrades during the long confinement, even tho the Canadian ambassador is the model host. Mendez is dead calm and competent thruout the entire adventure, the essence of a professional who's very, very good at his job. Ample opportunities for histrionics are avoided.
A certain amount of comic relief arises naturally out of the insider banter of John Goodman and Alan Arkin, who play long-time Hollywood pros (respectively a make-up artist and a director) brought on board to form a production company for Argo and gain it some legitimacy in the trade press. They have scathingly hilarious takes on Hollywood's artificiality, film-flam, and corruption, and you just know Affleck (who also directed) had real people in mind in a lot of those scenes.
But most of the movie is dead serious. Like Apollo 13, there's no spoiler involved in saying they all get out alive. It's a measure of the quality of both movies that you're still thinking, right up to the very end, that they probably aren't going to be able to pull it off.