Argo

Or, Farsi this movie.

The quote "truth is stranger than fiction" has been waiting around all these years just to describe the movie Argo. The movie's greatest achievement is the mere fact that people are not watching it and thinking, "what a crock of %*$@$."

Argo comes off a little bit like a steamy love letter to the CIA. Perhaps because the movie itself is aware of this, it begins with a series of animated storyboards explaining the recent history of Iran. This history explains that the CIA deposed a democratically-elected Iranian government and installed a lunatic despot, thus indirectly causing the Iranian Revolution and explaining why Iranians might stand outside the American embassy day after day chanting "Death to America."

Whether you buy this particular Luther-to-Hitler line of historical reasoning is kind of moot, because you are almost immediately plunged into the storming of the embassy, which is a beautifully created set piece. I don't know if it's historically accurate, but more important for a movie, it's visually accurate. It feels a little bit like you're watching Nightline–and Ted Koppel does, of course, make several cameos on television sets throughout the movie. 

As the students storm the embassy, six minor bureaucrats slip out a side door and find refuge in the Canadian ambassador's residence. Not only is the movie head-over-heels in love with the CIA, but it has a definite hard-on for Canada as well, which took these hapless functionaries in (when the British and the Kiwis would have thrown them to the wolves, as the movie points out).

Victor Garber, as Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor, is asked only to wear a funny wig–he is spared the funny facial hair and the gigantic glasses and the hysterical hairstyles that afflict many other characters. Maybe, being a real Canadian, he needed less makeup? Not so Ben Affleck, as CIA exfiltration specialist Tony Mendez. Affleck may deserve an Oscar for pulling off not just the beard, but the gold chain. 

When the scene moves from Tehran to Washington, the mood changes from horror to comedy, and it's a very deft move. The State Department wants to sneak the six Americans out of the country by giving them bicycles and asking them to ride across the Iranian countryside to the border in the middle of winter. Affleck's best acting moment is not rolling his eyes at this ludicrous proposal, or the ones that follow.

And then he suggests something even more outlandish. Mendez wants to pretend the six are part of a Canadian location scouting team looking into Iran as a location for a breathtakingly stupid science-fiction film called, of course, Argo. They will just drive to the airport and fly right out with their fake Canadian passports.The CIA brass ask him: "you don't have a better bad idea than this?" and Bryan Cranston, as Mendez's boss, deadpans: "this is the best bad idea we have, sir."

The genius of this premise is that it allows director Affleck to poke fun at Hollywood–and himself. The joke is that everyone, including the Revolutionary Guard, knows Hollywood is filled with people who'd sell their mothers for a hit movie. When Mendez asks makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) if he can teach one of the hostages to be a director in a day, Chambers responds: "you could teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day." 

It's the best double-entendre of the year. How can you not like a film that allows the characters to talk to the director that way? And it's not the only moment where Affleck compares the spy business to the movie business: both Mendez and the director of the film-within-a-film, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), have messed up their personal lives. Lester says: "it's like working in the coal mines, you come home and you can't wash it off." And you can't help thinking: well, he and the CIA agent clearly have that much in common.

Nothing is perfect. The table read of the fake movie is head-scratchingly intercut with a revolutionary press conference, for instance. But that's the thing about Argo. It's like a dog that follows you around and rubs against your leg and simply refuses to give up until you love it. Criticizing the movie is like kicking the dog. 

What's nice about all of this background is that by the time Mendez arrives in Tehran, we really feel like we know him. That's the fault with most action movies; the action begins so early that we know absolutely nothing about the hero. He's a cipher, an archetype, a straw man. Not so in Argo. 

And it's not just Mendez: Scoot McNairy plays one of the fugitive nobodies. He's clearly in love with Iran (he's the only one of the group that speaks Farsi) and wracked with guilt that he wouldn't leave with his wife when he had the chance; he's also a coward and threatens to wreck the whole operation. You know he's going to redeem himself; the way he does is both poetic and hilarious. All of the acting is superb. Affleck isn't shabby himself, but his directorial modesty even extends to hiring actors who can make him look mediocre.

The climax in which the hostages finally escape is predictably Hollywoodized, but let's forgive the dog for being a dog. Let Argo smell your butt, sit on your lap, and lick your face.