Argo (2012)

In Brief: Set during the late 1979's Iran hostage crisis, 6 Staff from the US Embassy escape on the street, and after being turned down by several other embassy, find sanctuary with the Canadian ambassador and his wife. While they're colleges are held captive at the Embassy, they lay low in the crawl space, hiding out during searches. Some months later, The CIA feel things have cooled off enough to try launch a rescue mission, and after a series of bad ideas, they come up with a safer bad idea. Location scouting for a Canadian Sci-Fi film, with the 6 restranded Americans playing roles of Director, Writer, Camera man etc.


Ben Affleck is proving to be a great director, but off the bat i can tell you one flaw in his most recent films. He's casting himself in them. He's not a terrible actor, but not as good as those around him. He's publicly said that if there's a role in his film that he wants as a actor, he's going to take it, But when the end of your film depicts the actors and the people they portrayed, and shows a good level of resemblance to they're parts. Affleck's Tony looks nothing like the Real Tony Mendez, even being of different ethnicity.

But everything else in the film, is fantastic. It tense at points, funny at others, and never feels like its just staying at the one spot, it's constantly making progress. The film progresses well, switching back and forth between the stranded Americans, The CIA operatives back home, and the Hollywood team providing the cover story for the operation. Each group is built up with terrific actors bringing a lot to what ends up being fairly small roles.

As the film is based on a true story, it can be hard to maintain a good level of suspense, especially if the audience knows how the story is going to end, but Affleck and his team have done a pretty good job of it.