Just read the review please!

Rating: 1/10 (10 October 2014)

"Early in the morning on Sunday, January 27, 1980, Mendez, "Julio", and the six American diplomats, traveling with real Canadian passports and forged entry documents, made it easily through security at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport"
That's the real story according to Wikipedia. They easily boarded the aircraft and they left! Was it based on chance? I'm sure it was to some extent. To an audience of year 2012 the whole thing looks like a huge high adrenaline gamble with 1/100 chance of success but considering that year 1980 was 25 years away from the dawn of information age, it was absolutely possible to easily fake everything and get out of the country with aid of an insider at airport. I have no problem with dramatizing a simple true event in order to make an appealing movie out of it and that's what Chris Terrio did exactly, following all the clichés of Hollywood but somehow the end product came out to be the worst possible story. Here is why:
1. I have no respect for CIA but I do not believe that they are stupid otherwise God helps us all. Since they are not stupid, they would never approve of a mission heavily relying on luck. This mission as odd as it looked, had reasonable chance of success with aid of a local agent to place fake entry papers at airport and I'm sure they had such aid and for obvious reasons, they just ditched him out of the screenplay (and the public story of the true event). Without that local agent, that would be a suicide mission as pictured in the movie and I'm sure no one in Washington would approve such mission. "If they are going to die, let them die in streets of Tehran, it's much less embarrassment for us"... this would be their logic.
2. We are talking about Tehran's International Airport in the year 1980. Passengers boarded on the plane? fine, they are still in Iran. call the airport administration and ask them to revoke the clearance of the flight. It takes time? Plane took off? Fine! Ask air force to intercept. It normally takes an hour and half for a 747 to get out of Iranian airspace. Bottom line, provided that we accept what pictured in the movie was what actually happened, they had ZERO chance of success after exposure at Tehran's airport.
3. They managed to reconstruct an imitation of Tehran with computer but almost all of the real time street scenes were shot in Istanbul. Iranian cities have very distinct architecture. You can shot a movie in Istanbul and claim that it was Cairo or Damascus but that doesn't work for Tehran. If you want to picture Tehran or other Iranian cities, you have 2 ways. either you go there or recreate them with computer using the thousands of clips available on Youtube as your reference.
Besides what was mentioned, I would say the main problem with the movie was lack of a descent villain. It doesn't matter how stupid the whole idea is as long as it is presented appropriately. The revolutionaries and hostile situation are not considered as villains. A single person should represent them as villain. A person who presents from the very beginning of the movie till very end were he is defeated (or wins) as the final resolve. I like to know who was the story consultant! Overall it was a flat boring movie from start to finish. The screenplay was awful, horrible dramatization of real events, relying all on chance, it could be emotionally involving for the people who were involved with the hostage situation but absolutely not emotionally involving for ordinary audience. BTW! What happened to Julio? The other guy who were supposed to be with Mendez?????
This is not a movie I recommend someone to waste his time on. If you haven't seen it, just move on!