ArgoFuckYourself

Ben Affleck is the most solid director of his time (of course, three movies). He's admirably consistent: good casting, good camera work, and good pace. He may be inheriting the Coen Brothers (or a better version of Clint Eastwood) spot of every movie being expected to be solid, award-contending stuff. However, he's not a star. However, you don't expect him to do something brilliant.

What we have here is a pretty wild premise. It's something you would make a B/C-movie of, or a comic book for those publishers I don't like. It's crazy. But it's a true story. I don't really get the appeal of a true story, at least for plot like this. I'm a true alternate universe fan so I'm perfectly okay with stuff that doesn't have any basis. If anything, it's sort of selling yourself cheap by putting in a clause that shields you from people saying the premise is dumb. Again, the metric is whether the story is good or not, independent of everything.

The basics is that the people of Tehran were really worked-up about America giving asylum to a former dicator who ruled the place and oppressed the place and whose wife bathed in milk as the people starved, all for many years. This did not happen with Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines. So the people storm the embassy, and I have to mention that this was really incredible camera work that raised my expectations so high, hold the people their hostage and film themselves saying cryptic stuff. But some Americans escape and no one ever tells the government that they've noticed white people looking lost and looking for a place to stay. The people of Tehran (generally) don't care about the leftist groups, I guess.

Well, in any case they find a place and there's a plan to get them out of there. And they do. But here's the bad part, that point where they escape and where they get out of Iranian airspace spans a hundred minutes, yet nothing much actually happens.

I've said that Affleck is pretty good with pacing and I'm not going to take that back. He is. It doesn't feel as long as it is (I'm not very good with time though). But it sort of feels like he still needs work on how to distribute his minutes.

In hindsight it is realistic. A lot of the hundred minutes, you see, is devoted to the prep time involved in the retrieval operation. Affleck phones up friends, he goes to Washington and plays boardroom, he goes to LA increase the layers of reality and credibility. It's a long process and although I would never say a montage is a better option, because of the truthfulness and reality of the storytelling, it's not as exciting a story as it had the potential to be.

What we're left is a story with few parts that stir your emotions. For what is a suspense thriller, it's short on suspense, or thrills. As we get on the ground, it's more Ben Affleck getting papers stamped and setting up the operation. We have the Americans still tense, waiting for the loud knocking at the door, armed men in tow. We're now at the last third of the movie with the same elements at the start of the second. As the actual escaping starts to unfold, we get a hiccup in the middle of a crowd (although the car ride through the crowd was very good) and a hiccup at the airport. It never dawns on you that this might be it, they could fumble and get shot.

When the plane flies off and safety is confirmed, there is rejoicing but you do not feel part of the exhausted grins. Instead, you notice how well photographed and set-up the scene is, how perfect it all fits; but that is praise for Rodrigo Prieto (the cinematographer), rather than for the film itself.

Because so much time has been spent on the prep time involved, not much is left for character development (of the people in hiding) and not much is left for the actual operation. Again, this is pretty realistic because it's a two-three day operation and no one really has time, and everyone is just tired and scared, but all that prep time is unimportant later on and we never go back to LA. The whole premise isn't really elaborated and the people don't really dig deep into their roles. I couldn't distinguish between the Americans, I couldn't see where the Canadian ambassador was coming from, and the family matter of Ben Affeck was hinted at and never really got worked into the story.

In exchange for truthfulness, it kills the traditional draws of a story without replacing them. It's too safe.

(Argo - Ben Affleck)