Argo

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2012)

Argo is being hailed as one of the best films of the year and has a very good chance of being nominated for many Academy Awards next year and maybe even winning Best Picture. When the film had ended in the theatre in which I saw it, most of the audience applauded, but I did not and to be completely honest, I do not get all the hype and praise that this film is getting. Yes, technically it is a well made film, but to say anything else other than that and then I would be lying. Critics have called it riveting from start to finish, but I actually found the film dragged quite a bit and to me was quite dull. I also didn't think the mix of the scenes of the characters in Hollywood and then jumping to the hostages in Iran worked. It did not work because in these Hollywood scenes they are mostly played for laughs and supposed to be humorous with Alan Arkin's character and his foul mouth and John Goodman's character who is kind of oblivious to the Hollywood scene. This all was supposed to be funny and whether I laughed, or not was not the issue, but I found having a good part of the film being like that and then going over and trying to be all serious and tense with the hostage situation in Iran did not feel suitable. I didn't find the film could find the right balance between the humour in the Hollywood scenes and the more melodramatic and political scenes taking place in Iran. It all felt quite out of place and I didn't feel it complimented, or followed up each scene well because of it. It just felt awkward and like poor screen writing. Another problem I had was that I found a lot of the characters, especially the hostages to be quite smug and arrogant. I really have no idea whether this was intentional on the film's behalf, or not, but I found that they got on my nerves after awhile and because of that I could not relate, or feel any empathy, or compassion towards them which is a big flaw for a film like this because I think the film wanted you to be very concerned about these hostages and by giving them more personality and allowing us to care for them, I think the tension and our relationship and attitudes about them would be a lot different and I think if they had done that, the film would have impacted me more. I know it was my own choice to go see Argo, and pay the almost ten dollars I spent to see it, but I have to admit that these type of stories are just getting tiresome to me. Almost everyday on the news I see terror in the world and different regions against each other and a lot of hatred and violence going around. I watch it on the news to see what is happening in the world and to keep up on current events, but at the same time it does get to me from time to time and sometimes I am flat out tired of seeing all this negativity and hatred towards one another. Because of that, Argo felt to me like a news story I had seen one too many times this, or any other week recently and I just was not in the mood to see a two hour movie about it. That may have been my fault walking into a movie like this, but I have to be honest and say my opinions about it. There were also parts of the film that felt overly glamorous to appeal to a wide audience and a lot of it seemed to be made in such a way that it would cater to people and especially Oscar voters. Oscar voters love films like this and going by the way the audience I was with reacted, they did too. However to me it just felt forced and like it was trying to glamorize everything a little too much for those miniature bald statues. I do commend Ben Affleck for trying to make a serious film and I think he has come a long way in his career and he showed great promise with his last directorial effort The Town, but Argo simply did not work for me.