Argo-naut-bad

Once again, I'm afraid my opinion has been influenced by hype. I really need to start going to movies with fewer audience/critic reviews bouncing around in my head. In this case, reviews for Ben Affleck's Argo were almost universally glowing, so I went in expecting a marvel, and getting a movie that was...perfectly fine.

Maybe it has something to do with how old I am. At the time that Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages, I was far more interested in learning to walk than America's political news. So maybe I'm not the target audience for the retelling of how six people escaped the embassy, but had to hide in the Canadian ambassador's house, until they were spirited out by the CIA under the guise of a fake science-fiction movie scouting for locations in the Middle East.

I don't want to give the impression that Argo is a bad movie, undeserving of its praise. It was a very well-paced, well-acted movie, and my only big issue with it are the bits where the real story has been too-obviously enhanced with cinematic tropes. Was it tense for the six hostages to sit on a plane, wondering if they'd be caught at the last minute? I have no doubt. But Iranian army and police did not literally chase them down the runway, and including a scene of that struck me as kind of silly.

Argo will likely be highly-recognized during awards season, and I've seen far worse films take home the top honor. But as far as movies I've seen so far this year go, I doubt it'll stick in my head anywhere near as much as Cloud Atlas or Looper have.

Argo: B-