BEFORE: Linking from "Zero Dark Thirty", Kyle Chandler carries over, reinforcing my obvious decision to watch these two Oscar nominees for Best Picture of 2012 back-to-back.
THE PLOT: Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980.
AFTER: I've got a built-in soft spot for any film that name-checks "Star Wars" this much - or makes references to the wave of imitators that came around in the late 70's, from "Battlestar Galactica" to "Buck Rogers" and even "Ice Pirates" (shudder...). I lived through that cinematic dark period (what do you mean I have to wait THREE YEARS for the next film?) and there really were no substitutes for "Star Wars", but that didn't stop Hollywood from trying.
(Wait a second - I just got it, 12 hours after watching the film. It's kind of got the same story structure as the first "Star Wars" film, only Iran is the Death Star, the hostages are Princess Leia, and Tony Mendez is Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. That's either an incredible coincidence, or a brilliant subtle homage... So that means Hollywood is Mos Eisley, a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". Yep, that works for me.)
Plus there are bits reminiscent of "The Producers", particularly during the screenplay selection phase - the hours spent poring over a pile of terrible scripts, searching for that perfect stinker, then dealing with the crazy screenwriter who has the most ambitious dreams, but in the end has to be informed that his script is complete crap, and is being used for purposes other than what he intended.
This leads to even more comedy bits, which I greatly enjoyed, as the film pokes fun at the entire Hollywood process. The comic actors cast here have the best lines, like "You think the Ayatollah is tough? Try the writer's guild..." or "You want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living..." There's a pretty good contrast established between the serious world of international espionage and the ridiculous world of film production.
Beyond an affection for "Star Wars", something else that my blog shares with this storyline is the fact that both were inspired by the film series "The Planet of the Apes". In "Argo", the lead character sees an actor in an ape mask and that gives him an idea about how to get people out of Iran. In my case, a few months before starting this project, I decided to watch all 5 or 6 of the films in the simian series, back-to-back in proper order. Suddenly they all made a lot more sense (relatively speaking, of course) and it made me wonder what other cinematic insights I could gain by watching other films in sequence.
Oh, right, history. The fall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah, and the U.S. hostages in Iran. I remember all that too, I think a kid in my junior high class had an uncle who was one of the hostages, so this was all big news in my hometown - I guess it was big news all over the U.S., right? Yeah, I think it was in all the papers. But nothing about this secret CIA mission, obviously, that rescued 6 people who fled the embassy and spent weeks holed up in the Canadian minister's home. That must have been hell, living from day to day in a dangerous region with only poutine and peameal to eat, and only Molson and Tuborg to drink.
Is it the BEST movie of 2012? Well, for my money, no. That distinction has already been given to "The Dark Knight Rises", which received a perfect score according to my less-than-scientific process. Maybe this explains why Ben Affleck is so eager to get into the Bat-Suit. But it's always a big day here at the Movie Year when I get to cross off another Best Picture Oscar winner - I still have to watch "Gandhi" and "The Artist" (why hasn't that run on premium cable yet?) and then there are just a few Best Picture winners left from the old days.
Also starring Ben Affleck (last seen in "Paycheck"), John Goodman (last seen in "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"), Alan Arkin (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Red Tails"), Victor Garber (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 2"), Tate Donovan (last seen in "Memphis Belle"), Clea DuVall (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Rory Cochrane (last seen in "Flawless"), Scoot (?) McNairy, Christopher Denham, Kerry Bishé (last seen in "Red State"), Zeljko Ivanek (last seen in "In Bruges"), Titus Welliver (last seen in "Twisted"), with cameos from Bob Gunton (last seen in "Trouble With the Curve"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Zodiac"), Richard Kind, Adrienne Barbeau.
RATING: 7 out of 10 storyboards
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