English Review – Argo (2012)
Never comes in my mind that one of extremely great escape would happen by an amalgamation of intelligence agency and filmmakers with an unthinkable concept-plan which jokingly described as ‘Ar-go Fuck Yourself’. I highly recommend this.
Almost forty years ago, United States were facing some serious bilateral crisis which put their specific civilians in genuine danger. Iran’s US Embassy confronted a mass rage outside building at the end of 1979 where the majority of them were Iran’s indigenous. For years, their nation had been ruled by monarchy lead by a Shah. By the power of revolutionaries, they have overthrown Reza Pahlevi at the time and make it ends to Shah’s era which reflected as corrupted government system neglecting the poor in hunger. The Shah was however given an asylum in America. While their new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini was rising, Iranian people took to the streets outside the U.S. Embassy, demanding the Shah be returned, tried and hanged.
The embassy is on chaos, the riot drove especially by armed people calling themselves as Revolutionary Guard left all of the American there with no option, being hostages. But some of them, six of them, managed to flee and hiding somewhere. Far from there, a CIA not-so-famous member Tony Mendez had planned a crazy escape plan by producing a great fake movie.
My initial hail to Ben Affleck has to be given on how the movie isn’t somehow biased, politically. I enjoy it very much, the movie didn’t distract with its very objective of telling a specific tale, not a whole nation-wide problematic. Affleck narrates it without taking a side whatsoever. Instead of calling it as Iran’s regrettable, as a neutral I see the Iran Hostage Crisis which used by the movie as the background situation, are the expected consequences of United States’s willy-nilly capitalism.
For some moments, Argo may be historically inaccurate but you can expect Affleck to make it just better. He recreates the last part of the movie to be intensely suspense. Brings it at a quick pace, where everyone’s action is decisive to the escape mission. The confirm the ticket and the studio 6 telephone’s call. It’s quite old fashioned but the way Affleck delivers it can’t be more nail-biting. It is a real heart attack.
Somehow, Affleck has to thank this ridiculously amazing story of courage. A live-action espionage, living a false identity, compromising a little chance of holding on. In the end, it is a fool game, but a serious one.
Alan Arkin and John Goodman were amazing, the dark comedy rises up because of their hilarious interplay with implicit empathy. Filmmakers also have some hearts, you know. Playing as Lester Siegel (a producer played by Alan Arkin) and John Chambers (an Oscar-winning make-up artist played by John Goodman), they hero-ing themselves in a stylish particular way. The “Argo Fuck Yourself“, the “If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s gonna be a fake hit”, the mixture of something like Flash Gordon and Star Wars to be a concept of Middle East Sci-fi movie, until the deep look of Arkin when he sees a hostage being held captivate on telly and only makes him more sure about his will, “We’re gonna need a script”, he says.
Depicting a gist of thankfulness, this movie sends many thanks especially to Canada, who actually plays a big part in the rescuing mission. Maybe it was because of them, after all.
