Movie Reviews: Argo
January, 1980. opens in the wake of the Shah’s overthrow in Iran, when six diplomats escape from the American embassy in Tehran to hide out at the residence of the Canadian ambassador. CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) is commissioned to get the diplomats out of the country before they are discovered, but the clock is ticking. A tense thriller based on real events, Argo occasionally has the feel of a comedy farce, as Mendez, movie director Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and special effects guru John Chambers (John Goodman) invent a Hollywood sci-fi fantasy movie — the titular Argo — as cover for extricating the six diplomats.
Affleck’s third film as director after Gone, Baby, Gone (2007) and The Town (2010) is his most ambitious project yet, being in part a film about the creative process, albeit one which never loses sight of its thriller roots.
