But six U.S. diplomats managed to escape the embassy compound. They were sheltered by Canadians in Tehran. The C.I.A. brings in Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), who comes up with a plan for The Six to exit Iran via Tehran's airport using Canadian passports bearing fake identities, under the guise that The Six are in Iran to scout film locations for "Argo", a Star Wars-style science fiction movie.
To bolster their cover, Mendez recruits Hollywood producers John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to launch Argo as if it was actually going to be made. It is a race against Iranian intelligence, who learns that The Six are on the run and attempts to hunt them down.
How others will see it. Argo was a box office smash, with a worldwide gross multiples of its budget. The film was showered with trophies on the festival circuit, winning the ultimate trifecta of Best Picture at the Oscars, Best Film at BAFTA, and Best Motion Picture at the Golden Globes.
At imdb.com, the film has a spectacular 600K user votes. The user ratings are lofty, at 7.7 overall. This figure rises to 8.0 among women over 45, the most independent demographic.
The user reviews are schizophrenic. Many attack the film for its fictionalizations, but a majority praise the efforts of filmmaker Affleck, and laud the film's dramatic tension and engaging story.
How I felt about it. Despite the film's great critical and commercial success, there is much about Argo that I dislike. It's not just the liberties taken with the true story, but those liberties invariably make the film less credible.
To begin with, Tony Mendez was Latino. Why not have him played by a Latino? Instead, the film's director, Ben Affleck, assigns himself the lead role. The actress playing one of the diplomat wives, Kerry Bishé, looks like a former Miss America finalist.
Tony had a partner, "Julio", who was an equal part of the mission and boarded the flight to Zurich along with Tony and The Six. "Julio", an alias for a CIA agent whose actual identity remains classified, was written out completely. Canadian immigration officer John Sheardown, who sheltered the diplomats in his residence for almost three months at his personal risk, is also fully written out.
According to President Carter, "90% of the contributions to the ideas and consummation of the plan was Canadian," with much of the credit belonging to Canada's Ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor.
The scouting party on the streets of Tehran (Tony + six diplomats under their identity) never happened. The party of eight (Mendez, Julio, and the six diplomats) made it through security without incident. The sci-fi film scouting cover story hardly came up, unlike in the film where it is the subject of much interest by Iranian screeners at the airport. And why would it, because unlike in the film, Iran apparently never realized there were six other American diplomats in hiding until after they had escaped to the West.
All of the "just in time" dramatics, such as the plane reservations appearing between checks, Chambers answering the phone call on the final ring, the Iran raid on Sheardown's domicile within an hour of The Six leaving for the airport, and an Iranian Revolutionary Guard motorcade chasing down the plane to Zurich as it leaves the runway, are completely fictional.
But think about it. If the story as depicted was actually true, then Mendez' operation was a long shot that should have ended in failure. But if the plan ended in failure, with the Iranian arrest of Mendez and The Six, Argo would never have been made. Once one realizes this, the movie has no tension as there is only one commercially acceptable ending.
The just-in-time dramatics and the distillation of the hero to Mendez are strictly Hollywood. They promote the myth of the unflappable lone agent who wouldn't become agitated if you set him on fire. This is in great contrast to the Iranians themselves, who are depicted as screaming fanatics, and the other American bureaucrats, who regularly raise their voices to each other in a cinematic but completely unprofessional manner.
The film also goes on too long after the flight has left Iranian airspace.
Are there good things to say about Argo? Sure. The production was well funded. And the subject is well worthy of a film. Just not this one.