Entertaining, But Maddeningly So.

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2013)

I used to work in a video store. My least favorite part of the job was when customers would ask for recommendations. "I don't know you," I would think, "How could I possibly tell you what you might like?" Sometimes, though, a movie would come out and it would be very easy to recommend. Argo is one such movie. I could tell anyone who was able to watch an R rated movie to rent this one and be sure that they would like it. It's extremely entertaining. Funny and exciting, it does what all great suspense films should do. It makes us believe in and care for these characters, puts them in dire circumstances and carefully puts them on the brink of capture or death then pulls them out again. Affleck is brilliant at this, and thusly the film leaves a fine taste in your mouth. However, the jingoistic approach to the American involvement (and the utter and complete void of mentioning the Canadian government's involvement) makes the film hard to swallow. Every single account of the historical mission gives credit to Tony Mendes but shows that the real hero of the tale is Ken Taylor, the Canadian Ambassador. The fact that they gloss over Taylor's involvement is upsetting, until the closing credits when they show you the real people's pictures next to pictures of the cast. Then it's infuriating. What they're saying is, "Look at the care we took in making the actors look just like they're real life characters, without worrying about portraying the events correctly." The fact that this film won the Oscars that it did is insulting. Tony Kushner's "Lincoln" screenplay and "Django" run circles around it.