CIA green-lights Affleck movie; Jason Bourne facepalms

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2013)

Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, "Argo" is based on a now declassified military operation which took place during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980. Bizarrely for a western film, it opens with a segment which briefly sketches Western "involvement" in Iran. The gist of the segment is this: in 1953, the US, UK and their respective corporate cartels staged a coup and successfully overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran (specifically Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was set to nationalise local oil). They then installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a brutal puppet who ruled as Shah of Iran until 1979, at which point he was overthrown by a local revolution led by religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
"Argo's" introductory history lesson doesn't tell us this, but despite the rise of Khomeini being presented as a populist and spontaneous uprising, he was partially backed by both the US and UK, all with the specific aim of ousting Pahlavi, who had grown too big for his boots. Prior to his ousting, Pahlavi had begun to flex his muscles, refusing to sign away exclusive oil rights and beginning a programme to seek "oil-sales policy independence". The superpowers didn't like this. They staged another illegal coup, and the CIA began courting the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ayatollahs, all essentially right-wing fundamentalists. These clandestine operations echo CIA orchestrated coups against democratically elected officials in Guatemala, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Guyana, Cuba etc etc, most of whom were trying to implement reforms, nationalise resources or help the poor. Can't have that.
Shortly prior to the toppling of Pahlavi, a "soft war" was waged against Iran. The West refused to buy Iranian oil, began a campaign of economic pressure, planted covert agitators to fan religious discontent, put embargoes in place, staged oil and banking strikes and began cynically protesting the presence of "Iranian abuses of human rights". Meanwhile Khomeini, who was being groomed to be the new leader of Iran, began appearing on Western news networks, which willingly gave voice to his propaganda. The message was clear: Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling their puppet. The Shah fled in January and by February 1979 Khomeini had been flown into Iran to replace the Shah's government and proclaim the establishment of his own repressive theocratic state. Almost immediately, the US began funding Iraq's decade long war against Iran.
Over the years, whistle-blowing would reveal the point of the Iranian fiasco: the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini was endorsed specifically in order to promote the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. In encouraging autonomous groups it was hoped that chaos would spread in what was termed an "Arc of Crisis", which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union. Of course such arrangements never go quite to plan, but then, chaos partially was the plan.
"Argo" takes place during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. During this Revolution, Iranians stormed the US embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Six American diplomats present in the embassy escaped and secretly found shelter in the home of a Canadian ambassador. "Argo" tells the story of the CIA's mission to rescue these six. It finds Affleck playing CIA hostage expert Tony Mendez, who concocts a brilliantly ridiculous rescue scheme. His plan? To pose as members of a Canadian film unit scouting locations for a kitschy science fiction movie. At its best, the film works as a comedy which pokes fun at science fiction conventions, the incredulity of Mendez's idea, and the assortment of Hollywood oddballs he gathers together in an attempt to execute his plan. Various cheesy scifi tropes – multi-ethnic aliens getting along – have the larger effect of humanising Iranians, science fiction used to warmly build bridges across a very specific West/East divide.
Elsewhere Affleck tries to take on bigger themes – the power of the media over the gun etc – but fails completely. His film eventually degenerates into a safe, conventional thriller. And despite its brief introductory coda, which pays lip-service to Neocolonial intervention, the film ultimately ignores the West's abhorrences and magically devolves into a thriller in which cunning CIA heroes evade menacing, monstrously portrayed Iranians. Iranians are still the enemy, prejudices are reaffirmed, the CIA is glorified, history's whitewashed and the film is designed to be self-aggrandising for Western audiences. Affleck's opening coda provides a veneer of objectivity, but the film itself salivates over the CIA, cool US foreign "intervention", and is hilariously blind to the political context in which it was shot and released (a decade of US military occupations on either side of Iran and an ongoing embargo and covert war on Iran itself). After all, six American lives are at stake!
Affleck (he'd play the pro-CIA Jack Ryan) and Matt Damon (he'd play the CIA hating Jason Bourne) wrote "Good Will Hunting" in the mid 1990s. That film contained a funny monologue in which Damon's character justifies never joining the NSA/CIA. If he joins, he rationalises, he'll be responsible for getting foreigners killed, foreigners he has no problem with, all so oil friendly puppet dictators can be put in place, which in turn will lead to his buddies losing their jobs at home to jobs outsourced to the enemy he just killed, all in the name of oil-spilling, environment killing oil cartels who then jack up pump prices on both him and his buddies. Damon's solution? Why not save time, "shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President."
6/10 - Affleck's trying to conjure up 1970s political thrillers ("Missing", "State of Siege" etc), but his source material is severely limiting; "Argo's" very funny first half quickly collapses into heavily censored, CIA sanctioned thriller clichés. Worth one viewing.