Argo tells the story of a rather unconventional rescue operation carried out by a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency exfiltration specialist who goes by the name of Tony Mendez. It’s based off of real life events in 1979 when sixty staff of the US embassy in Tehran were taken hostage by Iranian Islamists. The total number of hostages was sixty six, but six of them had escaped unknown to the Islamists and it was around this number that the film revolved around. The reason for the hostage situation was the anger of the Islamists against the Us for granting the Shah asylum after all his crimes.
Produced by Grant Heslov, John Goodman and Ben Affleck who equally plays the main star, Tony Mendez, the US state department is running against time to carry out this rescue operation before the kids the Islamists had organized to figure out from the shred mug shots the US staff had left behind, piece the faces of the escaped together.
Armed with three ideas/contingency plans on how the rescue operation should be performed, Ben Affleck’s idea appears to be the best 'bad idea' they could come up with and it involved flying to Iran and posing as a movie director for a sci- fi movie and rescuing the six members of staff who equally would pose in corresponding made up roles.
This film has some famous actors like Tate Donavan and Scoot McNairy whose face I was happy to see. It already had the stamp of quality on it by nature of the cast, so I was not surprised to see the number of Golden Globe nominations it had gotten amongst others.
It got so many ‘best’ in everything and I think it was well deserved.
This is a thriller and it does not let down in keeping up with the suspense. At some point I could not take it anymore and had to google some spoilers just so I could watch less tensely. Even with the new information I’d gotten, I was still sucked into the very realistic environment Director Ben Affleck created with the fear and tension provoked by the nature of the events and the Islamists.
It was a culturally eye opening experience for me, because I’d never heard of this story before. I loved how we were taken as viewers into the ‘behind the scenes’ of the logic behind choosing this option of posing as movie people. The US state department had to go to great lengths to collaborate with Hollywood people in order to lend credibility to this Argo film that would never get made. The plan was executed so well with the limited time constraints, it would have been remarkable if it had failed.
Watching this film as a non-American, I’m again reminded at how this country goes to great lengths to rescue its people. In many countries, many people might wonder why go through the whole trouble of rescuing that small number of people, but in America, we get to see even if briefly in movies and in rare real life occasions like this, just how much a life is worth.
I rate this movie a 10/10.
P.s a little trivia.
The real Tony Mendez was an artist and illustrator. That’s how he learnt to be so good at forging passports.
He also has a son from his second wife who is a sculptor.
As an artist myself, this knowledge was interesting to know.
If you’ve watched this film, I’d like to know what you thought.
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