Oscar Nominations 2013: Argo

I cannot confess to being Ben Affleck's biggest fan. I think he has been perfectly decent in many of the films he has starred in, but I was not keen on his writing debut with chum Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting. Now Affleck not only stars in a film, but for the first time, he has directed it too, and what a treat he has given us.

After the rise of Ayatollah Hosseini led to riots and violent rejections of all things Western in 1979, Iranian mobs in Tehran set upon the American embassy and eventually broke in taking everybody they can capture as hostages. Argo tells the true story of a CIA operation to evacuate, six staff who escaped the American embassy and who took refuge inside the Canadian Ambassador's house. Many plans were hatched but few provided a good chance of success, until Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), an exfiltration expert, came up with a harebrained scheme to evacuate the escapees by going to Iran under the guise of filming a sci-fi movie.

What results is a thriller the plot of which seems almost unbelievable until you remember that, for the most part, it is true. Some of the embellishments should be mentioned, and they are without doubt where most of the film's criticism has come from. A number of those involved in the incident have been offended by their perceived roles and the rewriting of history. The British Ambassador at the time of the crisis has reacted angrily to not only being written out of the film, but being portrayed as unhelpful during the rescue. According to the ambassador, Sir John Graham, the American escapees stayed at the British Embassy for one night before moving to the Canadian Ambassador's residence. Perhaps the motives for avoiding this part of the story for a Hollywood film are obvious, maybe even necessary, but revising the history of an event is unforgivable.

Despite numerous historical inaccuracies, and there are plenty, they are not always obvious and unless the viewer is an expert, they do not remove from the experience of the film. It follows the template of a basic thriller, but the story is so utterly fascinating that it feels a little more fresh than that. It is filled with suspense, allegedly far more than actually existed, and by and large this makes the film all the more enjoyable. However, sometimes, this suspense has clearly been injected and feels needless and overdone. The final chase sequence is the moment that feels most orchestrated and apparently it has little base in reality. It was also unnecessary, and one feels that under the guidance of a more experienced director the film could have been dealt with a little more subtly. That being said, it could have been a whole lot more 'in your face' and it refrains from being the star spangled patriotic story that it so easily could have become.

A positive point must be made of the set, costume and overall atmosphere of the film that radiated a real feeling of the time. It looked and felt like the late 1970s, where so often in the past films set in the late twentieth century could have been set at any point in the last 40 years rather than being precise. This was something that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy did so well last year and Argo invites such comparison. Incidentally, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a more complete example of a thriller than Argo and yet it lead, to me at least, to one of the most criminal omissions by the Academy at last year's Oscars.

Argo is an enjoyable film and provides suspense and a strong sense of the time in which it is set. However, it is hard to overlook the historical omissions and revisions and once you know some of these truths, it becomes difficult to view the film through the same eyes. I look forward to watching Affleck's future projects now, especially if they remain this engaging, but I hope in the future he won't see it necessary to revise fact.