Solidly entertaining but another example of US historical revisionism

Rating: 4/10 (11 October 2014)

Let me start by saying as a piece of entertainment Argo is very good. Good acting, good editing, great music and solid direction by Ben Affleck and some great casting (The actors are almost splitting images of the real people concerned, see the films end credits) The attention to visual detail is superb. The reason I'm only giving this film a 4 star rating is the historical inaccuracies. The film only as a postscript acknowledges the Canadian input into the hostage rescue, and this was only added to the film after a test screening. OK the final tense scenes at the airport never happened in real life and that is excusable as it adds nail biting tension to the drama but to depict the rescue as solely a CIA endeavor is inexcusable. This is American cinema at its most disrespectful and nearly as bad as the historical re-write in the film U571 where the Americans claimed to have captured the German Enigma machine whereas in reality the British captured it. Entertainment is an important release in these troubled times but keeping historical accuracy in films is more important IMO. The real story is a triumph over multi national cooperation and has enough meat to make a great film, so why alter the facts? Argo is a good entertaining story but could have been a classic film without the stars & stripes BS.