By Ethan Savel ’14, Staff Writer

[youtube w918Eh3fij0 Official Argo Trailer]

It’s 1979 and the Iranian Revolution is reaching a crucial apex.  Outside the United States Embassy in the heart of Iran, a group of anti-American protestors, mainly students, have gathered.  They have done this numerous times; however this day, November 4^th, is different.  A few students hop the fence, cut through the lock, and enable the mob to reach inside the compounds of the embassy.  They beat on doors, breaking down windows, trying to find a way to gain access to this building.  Meanwhile, inside, as a result of the insurgence, the embassy workers burn and shred papers, and try desperately to escape.  52 workers end up being captured and held hostage for 444 days.  However, this is not their story.

Argo is a CIA thriller based on a declassified true story.  Argo is the story of six workers who escape and find refuge at the Canadian Embassy. There they live in constant fear of discovery and execution. The intensity of the situation is echoed in Affleck’s film, where he directs and also stars as Tony Mendez, a CIA exfiltration specialist brought in to help conjure a solution for this escalating problem.

After a long line of terrible suggestions for a plan of evacuation, Mendez comes up with “The Hollywood Solution”, which involved setting up a fake film production, flying into Iran and extracting the six.  Mendez shields their true identity by making them members of his film crew, scouting a location for their fake fantasy-Middle Eastern project called “Argo.”

However, Argo extends beyond its true-life plot.  The film works on so many different levels: from performance to production to cinematography and screenplay.  Affleck immediately makes us believe that we have been transported to the 1970s, mixing archival video into different scenes, such as outside the Embassy, with new, grainy footage for the film.

Affleck casts an amazing crop of performers to star in his newest film.  Alan Arkin (Catch-22, Edward Scissorhands, Little Miss Sunshine) and John Goodman (The Babe, Monsters, Inc., The Artist) play the Hollywood connections. Arkin eats up his screen time with several excellent lines and monologues.  Scoot McNairy, Tate Donovan, Kerry Bishé, Clea DuVall, Rory Cochrane, and Christopher Denham play the six trapped Embassy employees and do a fantastic job showing their distress.  Bryan Cranston, Kyle Chandler, and Chris Messina have great supporting roles as CIA Agents aiding Mendez’s mission.

The last 20 to 30 minutes of the film are heart racing powerful scenes that captured my attention whole-heartedly.  Some may call into question the accuracy of the dramatic finale, but in order to attain the intensity of the ending, these situations had to be made more dramatic.  Affleck does a great job showing how every second counts.  Affleck gets as close as one possibly can to recreating the level of craziness and chaos the group faced while trying to escape.  The ending brings the film together in a terrific manner.

I thoroughly enjoyed the action and intensity of this real life movie.  I believe Ben Affleck did a fine job bringing this story to the big screen, and I believe he, as well as the film, will get some award recognition this winter.  I would definitely recommend that everyone in the community, students and faculty alike, take the time to see Argo in theaters.