Three For Three and Improving Along the Way

Rating: 10/10 (18 November 2012)

It is no secret to the majority of everyone that since my viewing of Ben Affleck's previous directorial efforts, Gone Baby Gone and The Town, I have been anxiously awaiting the release of his latest, Argo. The film is based on the rescue of six American hostages from Iran during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980 by a government sanctioned fake sci- fi film crew. Doesn't that sound like a convoluted, ridiculous, falsified story? Well...it is an outrageously true, declassified mission of the CIA, and best of all it completely surpasses any gripes over inaccuracy, dullness, or preposterousness.
Argo is a demonstration of two strengths that few directors hold these days, the ability to make you feel concerned for its characters and the talent of keeping you on the edge of your seat once the action begins. There is nary a dull moment in the movie aside from early exposition delivered by Insert Any Synonym for Intelligent, Clever, and Lovable Character Here. No opportunity for witty dialogue about how silly this situation is is missed and there is no shortage of memorable lines, especially from Alan Arkin and John Goodman as two Hollywood bureaucrats.
From these memorable lines of witty dialogue, we come to know every character in a positive and negative light. Iran, especially, is revealed as not only as a hive of dangerous revolutionaries and mass manipulators, but also as a home to hundreds of innocent children, men, and women who are just swept up in the ruckus. There are even grown, military men, who upon seeing the storyboards for the fake science fiction film, begin acting out what they imagine the film would sound like. That small amount of clarity for Iran and the probable emotions that laden the film's deceptively deep trenches, are what forced the packed crowd in my theater –elderly women, elderly men, young women, young men, little girls, and little boys—to give at least one conclusive clap at the film's emotive conclusion.
By combining the style of an intelligent thriller, the somber reality of a declassified CIA mission, and the scintillating wit that all films should possess, director Ben Affleck has created a constructive deconstruction of American and Iranian sensibilities toward one another and simultaneously made it provocatively interesting to the general public. For fellow connoisseurs of Affleck's two previous works, this film, at least in my opinion, is superior to both of those fine films. Argo will assuredly, knock on wood, be his ticket to an Oscar nomination in at least a few categories.
NOW GO SEE IT!