"I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this."
I try not to double-post in one day but I wanted to take a moment to review a great movie I just saw that doesn't fit in with my 31 Days of Macabre Movies. Argo (2012) is an intense thriller from Ben Afflek, based on true events surrounding the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. Ben Afflek plays Tony Mendez, a CIA "Exfiltration Expert" who needs to find a way to sneak out six Americans out of a hostile Iran.
This is a really cool story. I'm glad someone decide to make it into a film because it very much is a story that deserves to be told, it's the perfect kind of story to adapt to a film, and it's a pretty solid script.
The script also has an almost unexpected amount of humor in it that really makes this film a really enjoyable experience. John Goodman and Alan Arkin's characters have the funniest scenes in a movie that I've seen in a long time. All I have to say is, "Argo fuck yourself."
There's moments in this movie that seem a little contrived and not like the best solution for the story (like the chase scene at the end, or the part where the phone is ringing and they can't get to it because of a hot set...) but for the most part this movies script is pretty solid.
I had a little trouble understanding what was going through the main character's head. There was plenty of shots of Ben Afflek thinking (smoking) or contemplating but I never could figure out if he was doing all this just because its his job or because he has nothing else to live for? They didn't externalize his personal conflicts at all really, they show things get better for his family in the end but I would have liked a little more from inside this character's head a lot of it is all inferred.
There's a couple things I really loved about this film. First this film does a great job of explaining things that people might not be familiar with. From optioning a script to Iranian history to foreign affair procedures to CIA chain of command this movie blends the "telling" in so expertly it's quite amazing.
Second thing I really loved about this movie is there's specific moments in the film that are so well crafted that you will walk away thinking about them. In my opinion these include the beautifully edited Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and there's a moment when Afflek's character is grilling the six on their cover stories that has the most wonderful acting. The script has a bunch of these moments where the filmmaking, writing and acting all come together beautifully, these make this film completely worth seeing.
Last thing I want to mention is this movie is great at putting the "thrill" in thriller, I might get some flack for this one, but I dare say that Afflek commands a level of suspense in this movie on par with Hitchcock films! Even in situations where I thought for sure I knew what the ending result would be this film had me on the edge of my seat and that is just plain good filmmaking. Great stuff.
Argo (2012) is a very tense thriller that's well worth checking out and is sure to see some love during award season. 5/5 stars.
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