While watching Oscars 2012 live, I was hoping “Life of PI”
may get the best picture award. But, surprisingly (May be it is surprise only
to me) they had proclaimed “Argo” as best picture for 2012. Until then, I was not intrigued in watching this movie though
it was nominated for Oscars, otherwise decided to watch it to figure out what is
that it is in that movie that made it as the best film. Usually award winning
movies means, in my notion, very bore to watch as they contain melodramatic
story with historical background or war related with less to almost zero
action. Bottom line is, we (I) can’t “enjoy” while watching all award wining movies. The best
example is 2009 Oscar best picture, “The Hurt Locker”. That movie got Oscar award over “Avatar”that year. I’m still wondered how it got best picture over Avatar.
Anyway, there are exceptions, sometimes few movies, which are very entertaining
to watch and the same time won “best picture” award. For e.g “The Lord of the Rings”,
“Titanic” etc.
With that, I watched “Argo” movie. As a plot, it is a true
story of how a CIA agent rescued six US diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during
1979 Iran hostage crisis. The rescue was called as “Canadian Caper”. There is a
twist in how actually he had planned to rescue them. I’m not going to reveal
that here. But, I assure you, it’s NOT a James bond kind of rescue. If that is
the case then it would have become another old-style James Bond movie. That twist is very interesting and keeps you
to watch the whole movie without feeling bored.
The actor plus director Ben Affleck is a back bone for this
movie. His direction is very nice, but acting; I don’t know somehow I don’t see certain expressions on his face, he is subtle. I knew him before as he acted in
many action movies like Armageddon, Pearl Harbor. He did very good action in those movies.
Perhaps his expressions are choked off because of his beard in this movie. They
almost succeeded to replicate 1979 atmosphere, in terms of actors get up, hair
style and locations. Only the Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez) get up does not feel as
he was from 1979 era. They should have taken much care on this makeup.
I wondered seeing Iran’s women holding guns and leading revolutionary
guards that to in 1979 in this movie!!! I didn’t realize that women in Iran had so much
courage during that time which is almost 35 years back. Some of the "Iran's" shots as hanging a person on the public road, protesters demolishing the walls of US embassy
etc, are brilliantly pictured. It was terrifying to anybody witnessing angry
protesters wrecking everything and trying to capture them. The interesting
thing is the people of Iran that time, they rebelled US people so much, but
whereas they were favored Canadians, who were long term friends to
Americans. They even didn’t think that Canadian people who lived in Iran may
try to help US diplomats due to their long companionship with USA.
There are many tensed scenes towards climax, I don’t know
whether absolutely happened in that way, but, in the movie, it was like “edge
of seat” scenes and glues you to the screen. Though it was American CIA agent
Tony Mendez who planned whole rescue, due to the classified nature of the case,
US suppressed it and gave full credit to Canada government. Hence it named as “Canadian Caper”. The whole
details were revealed to public only in 1997.
Overall this movie is very interesting to watch due to the
fact that it is a true story and they had rescued US diplomats using
cinematic idea. I’m satisfied with this movie and felt it is a good pick for
best picture award. After all in that way US can show to the world, how
ingenious their CIA agents were ;). I’m giving 8 out of 10 to this movie.
