Criminally Overrated

Rating: 2/10 (13 February 2013)

Where to even begin? Maybe with the positives?
Well, I found the pacing to be pretty good, and this film wasn't an overlong snooze-fest like Lincoln, so that made it somewhat entertaining. Some of the camera work was very good--I really liked some of the shots they took. Bryan Cranston was amazing in his role--it made me want his character to be the lead actually. Alan Arkin also shone in his role. Finally, the editing was good and is rightfully nominated for an Oscar.
SPOILERS!
All of the other Oscar nominations are pure folly. Best Picture? Absolutely not. Really? A more boring Oceans 11 meets the streets of Tehran is good enough for Best Picture these days? How sad is that? Best Screenplay? So, turning an interesting, real-life caper into a droll, boring, formulaic Hollywood movie is a good thing? The dialogue was generally trash when Goodman and Arkin weren't delivering one-liners. At no point did any character say anything about themselves or their situation that felt like it actually mattered or had any impact. Best Sound? Seriously? In a movie that has a soundtrack populated with Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Scottish bagpipes? Sure, real original....You can go to any college bar in America and hear that soundtrack. Did America's movie establishment collectively snort a few lines of PCP-laced coke before watching this? Is that how it came to be such a great experience?
As for the picture itself, aside from the nominations, this played quite fast and loose with actual historical facts, which is kind of a no-no when doing a film based on reality. To divide the credit 95:5 USA:Canada is about a 50-point swing from where it probably should be, and Canadian reviewers have said as much. Also, the fact that Iranians are writing in that they feel the need to say they are not from Attila and the Hun and they aren't all bloodthirsty psychos bent on pillaging and murdering is pretty telling. Hollywood hasn't produced a film so stereotypically wrong about a whole race of people for, what, 3 months? I mean, Persian culture developed mathematics for crying out loud! Yet, this group of people has no more human qualities now than territorial apes? The fact that this was set in Tehran, which makes Iranians kind of important to the story and not a SINGLE Iranian is portrayed with any shred of a conscience is deeply troubling. The pigeonholing of Iranians as barbarians and Canadians like a little, ineffectual brother is absurd.
I was struggling with the fact that the movie would have been so much better had Ben Affleck's character actually been played by Chuck Norris! That says something (and not that I'm a fan of Walker, Texas Ranger which I'm not). The worst part, aside from 35 minutes of Affleck-face screen time, was the meeting he went to and completely shredded everyone's ideas (which were stupid, but...no one had any other ideas, seriously? In an intelligence agency?). He subsequently proposed something so preposterous that no intelligence agency would EVER have green-lighted it, except for that it actually happened...hmmm...HOW? Maybe some more background about how this proposal made it through! Surely, that's not still classified at this point. This is how you immerse your audience in the story, Ben, you need to be stronger with the details--and give history buffs a reason to say, "hmmm, that's something I didn't know!"
TL;DR: As for my rating being 2/10, which may seem overly harsh, well, an OK movie, technically, was ruined by historical pandering, a suspense-less caper that was oh so predictable, and a series of implausible action scenes with virtually no action in them. That this and Lincoln will be duking it out for many Oscars really makes me happy that I don't go to the cinema all that often anymore.