The best movie of 2012 - Oscar, BAFTA & Golden Globes said so...

Rating: 7/10 (5 April 2020)

Hindsight always allows liberties to be taken with facts when making a film like this, so it is probably best not to try and scrutinise too closely the actual (train of) events in this really gripping tale of half a dozen US citizens caught up in the capture of their Embassy in revolution-fuelled Tehran in 1979. Offered refuge by the Canadian Ambassador they remain for months until the CIA (hmmm?!) hatch a cunning plan to get them the hell out of there before the new rulers manage to discover they are missing from their mission. The wheeze is to turn them into a crew of Canadian film-makers and with the aide of Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) who arrives in Iran to ostensibly advise the team, they plan their project - a film called "Argo" - to facilitate their freedom. The usually reliable Bryan Cranston (Jack O'Donnell) is on really good form, as is Tate Donovan and a cracking Alan Arkin (producer Lester Siegel) and the pace develops in a tense, edge-of-your-seat style right until the end. The dialogue is plausible reflecting, well, the mounting tension they feel after living day-to-day in fear not just of their own lives, but of those sheltering them. Affleck's best effort to date, in my book.