I’ve never been a tremendous fan of Ben Affleck. His acting career consisted of mediocre films that could’ve been better if the production had the budget to cast Matt Damon instead.
Over the past few years, Affleck has started directing his own films but they still haven’t transcended outside the realm of average moviemaking that started his career in the first place.
Affleck’s latest project, Argo, is no different. It’s a film that plays by the rules and delivers what most audiences are expecting, unless the expectation is you’ll remember the movie after leaving the theater.
Argo is based on the true story of American diplomats being held hostage in Iran after America chooses to give political asylum to an Iranian dictator.
There’s a textbook of political background to the events being depicted in the film, but the gist is: Americans are going to die unless CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) can save them. His plan for rescuing these people is to create a fake movie in Hollywood and pretend to be location scouting in Iran. After humoring the Iranian government for a day or two, Mendez will disguise the U.S. diplomats as film crew and attempt to bring them home.
In concept, it’s a pretty stupid idea. In fact the film refers to the plan as the “best worst idea” the CIA could come up with, but given the fact that this is a true story and the operation was actually completed by the CIA in the 1980, it makes everything more digestible.
The film follows a heist-film format. For the first half, Mendez sets up his team, plans out the operation and begins to initiate the actual heist. The second half of the film is Mendez’s experience getting the diplomats out of the country.
The first half is clearly the stronger portion of the film because of the numerous inside jokes about Hollywood culture and superior supporting actors. In order for Mendez to sell the reality of a fake film he needs an actual director and script to back the project.
Mendez’s contact into Hollywood is John Chambers, played by John Goodman. Chambers introduces Mendez to a fictional director who can be trusted, played by Alan Arkin. Goodman and Arkin are the highlight of the film. Every one of their scenes contains comedic merit and if you’re familiar with Hollywood tropes, the jokes are even funnier.
The combination of Arkin and Goodman’s comedic talent along with the first half’s quick acceleration toward the midpoint of the film, gives a very good first impression. Once the film arrives in Iran, a lot of the issues with Affleck’s directing ability begin to show.
Chief among these weaknesses is how vapid the characters are. Affleck’s character is set-up as a man with a wife and a kid. His dedication to his job has prevented him from living with those who he truly cares about… at least I think that was the idea. There’s a total twenty-five seconds dedicated to Mendez’s family life and apparently that was enough to satisfy Affleck’s belief that the audience would be completely on his side and feel the stress he was going through.
The entire operation runs without a hitch and there’s no indication it would go any other way. Despite the suicidal mission and people’s lives being at-stake, the film lacks any personal connection to make you think these people feel any genuine emotion.
It’s so bad that the movie has to rely on century-old clichés to get across simple emotions such as worry, torment and indecisiveness. For example, after Mendez is told some crippling information about his operation, he doesn’t make a telling facial expression or shows signs of being distraught. Instead the audience is treated to a scene of Mendez drinking alone in his apartment with numerous crossfades to indicate he drank for a long time.
The movie drips with these types of corny clichés in place of more impressive filmmaking techniques such as… acting.
During the final sequence of the diplomats’ attempted escape, the film uses artificial tension builders to add to the emotion of the scene. These tropes include: getting detained past boarding time, their bus’ transmission has trouble starting and their plane is second in line to take off instead of first.
If you’ve never seen a movie before these methods might be quite effective but if you’ve seen a few action films and your IQ is higher than your shoe size it might feel a little excessive.
These complaints don’t necessarily make Argo bad but they certainly don’t contribute to making it good either. A lot of elements of the film balance each other out to almost complete equilibrium.
The addition of Arkin and Goodman allow the film to be recommendable, but only if you’re expecting a filler-film that lacks any appeal in the long-term.
It’s the type of movie you see with your family after there was an argument at the dinner table over your younger sister’s neck tattoo, you just want to forget about the world for a few hours. Argo pays the favor back, because after a few hours away from the movie you’ll likely forget you ever saw it, but there are worse outcomes to movie night.