So, there’s Ben Affleck (Daredevil and Gigli) and the movies that Ben Affleck makes (Gone Baby Gone and The Town). The second category is the much better one, and Argo serves to cement Ben’s place as the new Clint Eastwood, an actor who turns out to be even better at directing.
Here’s the premise: angry Iranian protesters break into the US Embassy and take everyone hostage. Six people escape and hang out in the Canadian ambassador’s house. The question is, how do you get the six people out? The ambassador can’t keep them around forever, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters are so, so close to figuring out that the six escaped the embassy. Ben Affleck’s CIA agent character comes up with the best of the bad ideas tossed around for the exfiltration. He gathers up an Oscar-winning makeup artist (John Goodman) and a producer (Alan Arkin) to make the titular sci-fi movie (concept art above) and say that the six are part of the crew.
This was the best heart-pounding, hand-wringing thriller I’ve seen since The Departed and Aliens. Every time Ben and Co. met a new obstacle during their escape, I could feel the audience screaming internally because of the tension. For me, this trumped the more traditional biopic, Lincoln, and the blandly directed, yet lovely Les Miserables, in that Ben directs with both skill and panache, and never misses a beat. The story rolls along at a fast clip, and I can’t stress how exciting and occasionally funny it was. All the awards that Argo’s been picking up lately are well deserved.
Finally, this is very much a late 70’s period piece, straight down to the shaggy hair and big glasses, and since I was watching it on the big screen in low quality, it looked like a movie from that time, which made it all the more believable.
Congratulations, Ben Affleck. You’ve made a fan out of me.
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