There is just something so magical about going to the midnight premiere of a movie you have waited a rather long time to see. As a kid, the experience of being up way later than your bedtime, and going to a packed theatre with your best friends makes the movie good almost before you see it. In my case, the experience outweighed the film so much that even if the movies were terrible in hindsight, my friends and I came out of the cinema buzzing about what we had just seen. Nowadays, whenever I watch Wild Hogs , Hulk, or Spiderman 3, I can't help but wonder what I was on when I saw them. Nonetheless, I could not wait to see Argo at its midnight premiere, and ignoring the simple fact that I had gotten very little sleep the night before, grabbed a friend and went. Strangely, the theatre was not even close to being full. I was surprised, and the emptiness of the theatre made me all too aware of the fact that I was in a dark room, in a comfy chair...
So for the first time in my life at a midnight showing, I fell asleep; an honour that as a kid I used to save for movies I watched past 1 am on a sleepover. I came in at random spots, and watched enough of it to still enjoy it. But in a movie as well crafted as this one, I knew I had done it a disservice, and thus saw it again, little more than a day later. Of course the movie I saw a day later was a totally different one from the earlier viewing.
For those of you who don't know, Argo is based upon a true story that takes place during the Iranian Hostage Crisis from 1979-1981. Angered that the U.S. has granted asylum to their recently overthrown Shah, a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran turns violent, as protestors storm the embassy, claiming all people inside as hostages. Luckily, six Americans manage to escape and find safety in the house of the Canadian Ambassador. At this juncture, the obvious question arises : how to get them out? Tony Mendez (Affleck) is just the CIA operative to do so, and hatches a plan to have the hostages escape posing as a film crew for a fake movie entitled "Argo". Affleck gives a good performance, but not an award-winning one. Affleck, who also directs, does quite enough to give the role what it needs, although when his character faces his biggest conflict, he is found slightly wanting in expression. What makes the film spectacular then, is a combination of the supporting cast and just the type of movie it is.
Even though Argo could be summarized by video store labeling as an 'escape and chase' movie, it puts way more stock in the realistic troubles of a car taking agonizingly long to start when the heat is on, as opposed to an impossibly choreographed chase that never could have taken place. Interestingly enough, this approach works much better than one would expect, leading the woman next me during the second viewing to bite her nails throughout (nastily spitting them out mind you). This way of inducing fear and nervousness in the cinema works mostly because of it's great supporting cast.
Argo is one of those movies where you will constantly wonder where you have seen certain actors before, but it finds its stand out supporting performer in Byran Cranston (Breaking Bad/Malcolm in the Middle), who makes up for some of the emotion Affleck lacks at times.
Amidst all the nail-biting drama however, the movie still finds a way to be funny, with John Goodman and Alan Arkin, who play the Hollywood moguls that help Mendez fake a movie, providing the majority of the laughs in the film. In fact, it is the extraordinary balance between the humour and the tension that makes the movie so effective. Some of the best moments in the film come during situations that in real life were probably not funny at all. I found myself starting to laugh at particular scene where some guards check some storyboards Mendez has brought as proof of the movie, until I realized that this actually happened and that what seemed like a funny situation must have been heart wrenching at the time. The end of the movie, amidst the credits, honours the people involved in the real mission, and is accompanied by some recorded words from Jimmy Carter, who talks about how difficult not talking about everything was when he arguably lost his reelection bid because of the crisis in Iran. It adds a fitting ending to a great movie that already does a good job of staying true to actual events, and seems to have special meaning in light of the much publicized storming of the U.S. Embassy in Libya just recently.
That's the thing about a great movie like Argo. It woos, surprises , amuses and scares, without the slightest suggestion that you sat through what could have been an intentionally dry and boring history lesson . See it.
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