A Rescue of the Ages

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2012)

A Rescue of the Ages
An Oscar nomination movie for sure. Argo is one of the best movies of twenty twelve and excellently combines historical fact with Hollywood drama. Adding in amazing actors like John Goodman (John Chambers), and Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel) was just a cherry on top. Lastly, the director (Ben Affleck) pulls off the challenging task to make the plot simple and never stops moving.
Predictably, whenever a movie based on true events come out, Hollywood does an amazing job designing a movie with little semblance to what actually happened. However, in Argo the movie stays remarkably close to what actually happened with small parts of added drama; where the plane is taking off and the cop cars are chasing the plane down or when they travel to the market. Even the credits of this movie are worth watching; showing pictures of the Iranians in the streets that have been recreated in the movies paying close attention to minute details.
Furthermore, the acting was superb. Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel) and John Goodman (John Chambers) were able to bring just the right amount of humor and playfulness to a serious movie. Meanwhile, Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez) brought the drama to the movie as the man sent to rescue the American hostages. Finally, the actors for the six Americans that hid in the Canadian embassy displayed an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts right down to their clothing.
On the other hand, Argo does not accurately show several events and people in the story. For example, America had a part but Canada played the main role in the rescue of the Americans. In addition, in the movie the Iranian rioters seem contrived and unrealistic; this demonstrates that director (Ben Affleck) did not either have a) the budget to accurately portray this shot, or b) that this scene was difficult to choreograph giving the nature of where the scene was filmed. However, if you are looking for a great movie and don't mind small miss portrayals then Argo is perfect.
Possibly, one of the hardest things in Hollywood to do is to keep the plot simple to understand and to keep it moving. Nevertheless, Ben Affleck pulls it off keeping the plot easy to follow and gripping. Moreover,with one quote from Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) he capture all the drama of the movie. "Right... Look, I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the Army that had better odds than this."
Argo, featuring great actors like Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel) and John Goodman (John Chambers) keeps the plot simple and concise while combining Historical fact with Hollywood drama. All in all Argo is a must see thriller.