Argo – Suspense at Its Best

**** 1/2 out of *****

Running time: 120 minutes

MPAA rating: R for Language and some violent images

Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, is a crackerjack political thriller about the attempt by a covert CIA operative to rescue U.S citizens from Iran following the 1979 ouster of the Shah by Muslim revolutionaries.

This true-life adventure joins such genre successes as Peter Berg’s The Kingdom and Florien Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others in combining edge-of-your-seat excitement, politically realistic situations and heartrending character drama.

Affleck’s film just misses being as accomplished as those gold standards for political thrillers, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and Z. But its success is in no small part due to the fact that it avoids the polemical approach to its political elements which bogged down Salvador, Under Fire and Syriana.

In his first feature screenplay, writer Chris Terrio sidesteps backroom politics. He also avoids the behind-the-scenes bargaining over the release of 52 hostages taken by Islamist students and militia in the Fall of 1979. This may have dominated the world press for 444 days while Iran and America bickered, but it would have slowed Argo down to a crawl.

Instead, Terrio interweaves a broad palette of characters and story elements to create the film's structure. The result is a complex and vibrant adventure of impossible bravery, Hollywood magic and split-second timing which involves the audience at the same high levels of excitement one would expect to find in a James Bond movie.

There's very little of the plot which can be laid out here without some serious spoiler alerts. Suffice it to say that Affleck, as C.I.A. agent Tony Mendez, plans and executes a daring rescue. He is aided in his plotting and on-the-ground operation by real-life movie makeup artist John Chambers (played wonderfully by John Goodman), who made Mr. Spock's ears and won the Oscar for Planet of the Apes and by fictitious film producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin, in a sparkling performance).