TIFF 2012 REVIEW: ARGO
(Gala Presentations)
(USA,
2012)
Cast: Ben Affleck, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Brian
Cranston, Alan Arkin, Philip Baker Hall, Clea DuVall
Written by: Chris Terrio
Directed by: Ben Affleck
This riveting, pulse-pounding race-against-time thriller is yet
another one of those "based on a true story" deals that ignited more
than enough controversy and cries of "foul" before it was even
announced as one of TIFF's most-coveted galas.
The back story holds a special place in the hearts of Canadians--we're not
a country of many myths and tend to
downplay our achievements in diplomacy, but as a nation "The Canadian
Caper" is as sacred as the story of George Washington skipping a silver
dollar along the Potomac. It even inspired one of the greatest SCTV
parodies...
Those of us of a certain vintage (like this reviewer) might
have been a bit too young to absorb all the facts (we were too busy waiting for
"The Empire Strikes Back" to be released), but in
long-ago/not-so-long-ago 1980, but from what we could glean from our parents'
copy of Macleans went something like this: on November 4th, 1979, the U.S. embassy in
Tehran, Iran, was stormed and seized by Islamist militants, in protest over
America's harbouring of their deposed Shah.
Six American diplomats--Robert Anders, Cora Amburn-Lijek, Mark Lijek,
Joseph Stafford, Kathleen Stafford and Lee Schatz--managed to evade capture and
execution. Anders contacted his friend
John Sheardown, a Canadian immigration officer, who eventually brought them to
the residence of Canadian Ambassador To Iran Ken Taylor, where they remained
for 79 days. Taylor
contacted the Canadian government for assistance. Fake Canadian passports and
forged Iranian visas were created and issued to the six Americans, and CIA
agent Tony Mendez, something of a master-of-disguise, provided the cover story
of a Hollywood location scout. The six boarded a plane
to Frankfurt, Germany
on January 27, 1980.
Everyone made it home safely.
Chris Terrio's screenplay is based largely on Joshuah
Bearman's Wired article "How the CIA
Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran", written within a decade after the records
were declassified by the Clinton administration, and on Tony Mendez' own
account "Master Of Disguise". Does
it take liberties with the real-life tale?
Definitely.
The film hits the ground running with a mixture of archival
news footage and restaged events that chronicle the turbulent series of events
that eventually have the six Americans splitting out on the street outside the
embassy into two panicked groups. Once holed up at the home of Ambassador
Taylor (Garber), CIA consultant Mendez
(Affleck) is brought in and entertains a series of increasingly bizarre rescue
plots, everything from fugitive school teachers to dropping down bicycles for
an ambitious border run. A chance
late-night screening of "Battle For The Planet Of The Apes" gives him
another idea, and he tracks down old friend and CIA
cohort John Chambers (Goodman), known to most as the Oscar-winning makeup
maestro behind "Star Trek", "The List Of Adrian Messenger",
and the "Apes" saga.
Chambers suggests that for the fake-movie scam to work, it
must be entirely believable, and for that, it's essential not only to convince
the Iranians, but the entirety of Hollywood
as well. Old-school producer Lester
Siegel (Arkin, tearing into a role invented for the film) is game to get in and
even stages a fake reading and arranges prominent trade ads and billboards for
his upcoming faux-"Star Wars": "Argo" (in fact, an unfilmed
adaptation of the Roger Zelazny sci-fi classic "Lord Of Light").
The film plays out more or less faithful to actual accounts,
but Affleck and co. never hesitate to ramp up the melodrama whenever possible
and add more complications that were necessarily present, chief among them, a
lengthy inspection of the passports and visas by a suspicious airport guard
(never happened), and a jeep pursuit along the tarmac by armed security as the
fugitives' escape craft pulls away (definitely
never happened)...
Still, the film is beautifully shot (Istanbul doubles as
Iran), inventively staged (menace lurks around every corner), and masterfully
edited (the climactic three-way cross-cutting is dizzying), servicing a
wonderful, perfectly-cast ensemble and Affleck's most confident and muscular
direction to date (casting himself as Mendez in a role that curiously
underwritten and merely serviceable, might be the only misstep, but not to the
film's detriment).
©Robert J. Lewis 2012
