Countering the Dark Forces

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2013)

Rediscovering himself in the guise of a brilliant director, Ben Affleck ("The Town", "Gone Baby Gone") changes tune and returns with a political historical drama much in the mold of Steven Soderbergh's or fellow actor/director George Clooney. Obviously a future talent to be reckoned with, Affleck again comes up with a skillfully focused, well scripted and deceptively subversive movie about a true CIA operation placed somewhere on the verge of absurd and ingenious. When six American embassy workers escape being taken hostage by Iranian revolutionist forces during the 1979 upheaval, the find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. With the situation quickly deteriorating and no hope of legally extracting them from Iran, special operative exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) conceives an idea to create a fake Star Wars rip-off film production called "Argo" and thus smuggle them out of the country as part of the movie crew. In order to bring this to fruition he employs Oscar-winning make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), who states with intent that "If I'm going to make a fake movie, I'm going to make a fake hit." Equally thrilling as it it absurd Ben Affleck shows an surprisingly mature capability to mix up humour with the dramatic backdrop, thus creating arguably one of the most entertaining political features in history. Despite strong thematic ties to Barry Levinson's "Wag the Dog", partly due to the fact that it is closely based on a real story and its pulsating authenticity, "Argo" is a vastly superior movie (but I still find "The Town" to be Affleck's best movie, "Argo" however proves that Affleck is not limited in talent to certain subject matters). Given the subject matter the urge to drop into a less serious tone for a satire on the entertainment industry was reigned in, nicely balancing the "%^&* You Argo" idiocy with the stark deadly reality of the situation at hand. Even scenes of utter dread, for instance during the final check just before allowed to board the plane, has its moments of gleeful subversive humour (as revolutionaries admire the storyboard of the sci-fi fantasy pseudo-movie). Conversely Affleck shows level-handed humility in portraying events, while somehow managing to bring a pulsating touch of reality to Iran - you can almost feel the dusts of revolution floating in the air.
Ben Affleck also shows some respectful awareness as to the bigger picture, basically starting the whole movie with a short introduction into history, including the fact that Iran and the revolution were self-made CIA-inspired events dating back to morally doubtful interventions into the young Iranian democracy and their direct impact on reinstating a bloody dictator. Some doubts can be raised towards the patriotic ending, where an overly gloating ending relishes in the fact, that an American special operative success will be claimed by the Canadians. Not to mention somewhat "Lord of the Rings" serial endings. Otherwise however a truly brilliant movie by the new prodigy of American cinema.