Argo is based on the real-life incident where six U.S diplomats were rescued from Iran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis by having them guise as a film crew creating a sci-fi movie within the area. Though the movie changes a large majority of the real-life event, it brings up a common issue that comes with most real-life based films. Most of them feel the need to alter and include various other moments of tension or suspense in order for it to feel more cinema-worthy, and this does conflict with the common belief that things shouldn’t be change from real-life too drastically. So how far is too far? In 1979 during a period of Iranian revolution, six out of the sixty U.S embassy staff within Iran escape capture and are sheltered and forced into hiding. While most of the U.S. have no good solution to save these people, Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck) devises a plan so crazy and dangerous that it’s the only real option they have; pretend to be a film crew creating a sci-fi movie named Argo in Iran and use this ploy to get all of them out alive. With help from people in the CIA, the film business and even from within Iran itself, Mendez needs these six individuals to trust him with their lives in order for all of them to get out alive. Argo was one of the heaviest hitters in the 2012 Oscars, winning Best Film Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. The film handles a pretty serious topic in an overall balanced way and offers up some good acting, directing, editing, and a nice amount of tension. However, this also comes with its own share of flaws that make the movie struggle in a way different than you would expect for a movie based on a true story.

The actual accounts of the movie were taken from different source; mainly from the 1999 book by Tony Mendez himself, The Master of Disguise, and the 2007 Wired article by Joshua Bearman titled ‘’The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran’’. Being a really interesting and dark moment in American history, as well as the real-life event of creating a fake movie to save stranded people in a different country making for a fantastic concept for a film, the movie does a pretty decent job highlighting the history of the Iranian Revolution as well as the plan they took to save them. Ben Affleck does a pretty good job directing the movie as it takes what could easily be a boring long-winded movie and keeps its pace quick and energized, it doesn’t get boring or loses the audiences focus. There is a the major elephant in the room that a lot of the film was altered from the real event to work more cinematically; with the big changes like undermining the role of the Canadian Embassy in the rescue (when they did a majority of the work), and changing the role of the person who actually created the plan (Tony Mendez was only the person who went to help, while Ken Taylor, the Canadian Ambassador, was the one to orchestrate and create the plan). Certain elements involving the plot, mainly the false moments of tension made up, don’t feel out of place because it isn’t fabricated the truth, rather stretching out the real event. When creating something based on real life, everything doesn’t have to be 100% accurate, but it overall needs to represent the event or persons mindset, motive, and emotions effectively. This movie does half of that pretty decently as the process of getting them out of the country seems pretty accurate outside of a few tense moments.

The side that it fails at is in the emotions that come with the people. The movie seems to be more focused on the actual event as opposed to any of the people involved, which means that the crisis and plan is given a lot of attention and mapping out, while the people are left pretty undeveloped. Being in real life, the characters aren’t going to be the most interesting individuals, but every person in this movie feels like a cartoon with how minimal relatability comes from them. The sense of tension behind the hostages comes from the fact that they’re real people, but otherwise nothing about any of the characters is fleshed out to make us even remember any character’s name. This isn’t a fault with the acting at all; everybody does a pretty decent job acting wise and both sides of importance in the film; Iran and the U.S. are both given screen time between the other, but there’s a distinct shallowness in how these characters are portrayed. The group creating the plan feel very cartoonish (despite being well acted by people like Ben Affleck, John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Bryan Cranston) and the people they go to save are so interchangeable and forgettable that they’re more annoying extra than actual people. The Iranians are also portrayed as pretty one-dimensional bad guys as their motives are hazy at best and the forced aggression added to their presence makes them come across as purely evil people.

From a technical level, there’s some interesting stuff done within the film that help give it a bit of an edge over what it could have done. The mixture of real-life footage and photos aren’t anything new for this kind of movie, but it does make some of the grizzly imagery even scarier when it shows the real photo in the ending credits. There’s also some fun change to the aspect and exposure when the main character enters Iran; the color is more grimy and green-tinted, it feels more claustrophobic and shaky in the camera-work, its portrayed as a less pleasant place compared to the clear, pristine looking America. That’s only the intro though, as there is still some pleasant looking shots of the area and fancy looking buildings. The editing in a lot of the montage-like scenarios is effective, quick, and nicely paced together to create moments that could feel overly phony and too Hollywood in nature, but it doesn’t distract from the tone at all. The music feels a bit like an unnecessary add-on as music from being part of the soundtrack doesn’t feel like it impacts the story in any way, but they don’t stay throughout the movie. The movie does have a fair amount of scenes that invoke a good feeling of tension, and even though they were fabricated events, it does help the film create that needed sense of suspense that likely would have been missing if they followed it like the real event.

Argo proves to a good movie that highlighted a specific part of American history that the world likely wouldn’t have known too much about and explored it in a quick and easy to understand way. The changes made to the story, outside of the logistics behind who was responsible for the plan, do more positives for the film as oppose to detract from it and make a more engaging movie than it would have been without it. The directing is good, the actors are doing well, the camera work has some good moments and when it needs to feel suspenseful, it does it pretty well. There is a element of shallowness that comes with the movie due to the character’s being very one-dimensional and not feeling like real people. To learn more about how sci-fi saved lives, check it out and see for yourself.