Hee haw, hello movie blog.
I was really excited to see Argo. For a long time, I assumed that this was going to be based on Jason and the Argonauts, which I thought sounded pretty cool. When I learned that this was definitely not the case (it’s about the CIA’s plot to rescue six stray Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis by inventing a fake film crew and a film called Argo) I was still pretty excited.
And this was an exciting film. It’s basically a heist movie. The CIA teams up with Hollywood in an attempt to rescue these hostages before the Iranian government hunts them down and kills them. It’s a fascinating story, and I was engaged and amused throughout.
That said, I do think Argo tries to be too much. Alexandre Desplat’s soaring soundtrack towards the end makes this out to be on par with an Apollo 13-like mission. This was a big deal for the CIA, yes. However, especially towards the end it is obvious that the drama has been ramped up to 11 for Hollywood purposes. The climax centres around a phone waiting to be picked up (ring-ring… ring-ring… ring-ring…oh shit they’d better pick up the phone! oh shit go back in to your office pick up the phone or else they’ll be dead!) which was exciting at the time, but really, it didn’t have to be hyped up that much. I felt a little played with there.
Another problem I have with this is its complete lack of character development. Ben Affleck plays a CIA agent who, for most of this, wears a look of moderate concern on his bristly face. He is the main character, but all I can tell you about him is that he is a really great CIA agent. Attempts to humanize him include a few scenes of him calling his little son, which, to me, just served to stereotype him even more as average lonelyman Joe. The hostages were an anonymous huddle of scared white people. The other CIA agents were, well, men in suits.
You might say that this story should speak for itself. It doesn’t need strong personalities carrying it to the finish. Sure, but that makes for a mediocre movie. Zero Dark Thirty, on the other hand, had really powerful characters. They, too, were CIA agents in a story that focused largely on the mission at hand. However, I remember its characters. I was really touched by ZDT because I felt like I grew to understand Maya and her colleagues, and thus I could feel their successes and failures. Not so with Argo.
One benefit of my terrible internet connection here in Shanghai is that I have been revisiting (or, in this case, visiting) all the movies that I have saved to my computer. I’ve had The Shawshank Redemption on my hard drive for years, but last week was my first time watching it.
taardvark 