Argo: GUBU

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2016)

Or, to give the late CJ Haughey's legendary acronym its full name: Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented.
although, in Argo's case - Ben Affleck's film, and its original - it worked just fine, even if some of the finer details have been changed - for artistic licence, even plausibility stakes, as in... ...With anti-American feelings at fever-pitch following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, A CIA operative (Ben Affleck) devises a daring and original plan to rescue six American Embassy officials who'd found refuge in the country's Canadian Embassy.
The paradox of Ben Affleck's first Oscar-winner is that it's less bloated, more focused, and more tightly-scripted than his two previous lower-budgeted films; it's also a comparative rarity in Best Film Oscar-winners of recent years in that it's hugely-entertaining, to boot - even if, of necessity, it sacrifices a smidgin of quality for mass-market appeal. But yet, although I was expecting to find fault with it - mostly because of the glaring faults of its too-ambitious predecessors - the faults,more minor quibbles, were largely in the early too-breakneck pacing, which sacrificed dialogue clarity, far too often, and the over-stretching of the tension in the climactic airport scene.
Initially, I was looking for comparisons with Costa Gavras' 'Missing' - which is perhaps the benchmark combination Hollywood entertainment-political thriller - and judging it somewhat unfairly, in comparison; but that was largely due to the surfeit of Hollywood-set comic elements; once the Affleck character left home, things started to get serious, most notably in a tense scene in a claustrophobic bazaar, where the six officials suffered a testing dry run. But, anyway, ranking it equal with 'Missing' would be impossible, because it's an altogether different beast, with different aims, although proclaiming it equally-successful in achieving those aims might be the best comparison I could make.
Perhaps its closest 'Missing' comparison might be Bryan Cranston's portrayal of Affleck's middle-aged, conservative middle-American, superior, who at times resembles Jack Lemmon's 'Missing' character's,when he begins to lose faith in everything he'd held dear, but even in a film which features notorious scene-stealers like John Goodman or Alan Arkin, performances - apart from the officials' real-live ones - were always going to play second-fiddle to plot.
Of course, there'll be the usual quibbles from the usual suspects about the usual Muslim caricatures, but, as Bob Marley once said 'an angry mob is an angry mob', and providing balance and fair play is best left to the history and civics classes.
A most pleasant surprise, and an absolute cracker of a movie.