Argo: The Movie About a Movie... Almost

I was hooked from the title card. Affleck’s choice to shoot in 70mm to preserve the feel of the late 70s and early 80s helped him out a lot. The opening sequence is a montage of active storyboards, nifty foreshadowing, which I thought was very pleasing with how every panel changed from a sketch to a photograph of the Iranian Revolution against the shah.

Also touching on casting, it was nice to see Clea DuVall back onscreen, fearing for her life and not having some kind of an attitude and doing that weird neck twitch when she has condescending dialogue. Victor Garber was also a treat to see again, having the likability of his Thomas Andrews in Titanic. He also pulled off the hair.

As far as writing goes, it was engaging and fast-paced. Affleck does well to get back to the nitty gritty writing we saw in Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone, despite the unnecessary focus on Mendez’s rocky relationship with his wife. The real treat besides seeing Ben with a hairy face was the suspense in the camerawork. He didn’t try to hide anything, didn’t want to shove anything aside for fear of what critics might say. Children in sweatshop conditions putting together mountains of shredded documents from the U.S. Consulate, an Iranian man shot by the militia in broad daylight, and a man publicly hanged from a construction crane, all of which were pasted in alongside archival footage from news broadcasts and declassified footage of the protest outside the consulate.

This film mixes gritty suspense with the right amount of dark humor, so much that it’s self-aware of how absurd this whole plan is and the people involved. We get to see a nice temper tantrum from Bryan Cranston, seeing a glimpse of what it would be like if Walter White was in the CIA, and the countless jokes about the kitschness of Hollywood (“Where’s the location?” “Think of the worst possible place.” “Universal City.”).

Ben Affleck is 3/3 now as a director, making this a great compliment to adult cinema, a movie made for cinefiles. I really hope, that out of the absurdities that studios are releasing later this fall, that Argo will make an Oscar nomination for best screenplay, bare minimum. I’m glad to see Ben getting ballsy with what he wants to write about, choosing gutsier plots and roles. This movie was worth the $11 I spent for a ticket.