This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 11, 2012 - With his slam-bang 2010 Boston heist flick "The Town." Ben Affleck proved he could simultaneously direct and act in a suspenseful thriller. His fine new movie, "Argo," shows he can succeed in both roles while telling a more serious story.
"Argo" is mainly set in 1979, when a mob of Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy and took 52 hostages. Six Americans managed to slip away, and they ended up hidden in the basement of the Canadian embassy.
In a story based on confidential intelligence files that were made public in the 1990s, a wily and unorthodox CIA agent named Tony Mendez (Affleck) comes up with an outlandish plan to get the six out of Tehran: He will go into Iran posing as the advance man for a movie company that wants to shoot a trashy costume melodrama in the Middle East. When he returns home, he will take with him the six Americans, with Canadian passports in hand, posing as movie personnel.
It is, as Mendez's boss (Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad") admits in the film, a bad idea, but it is the best bad idea anyone can come up with. And so the plan is set in motion. The result is a rousing thriller that is notable for the way it sustains dramatic tension while quickly and precisely providing historical background.
That includes the crucial information that America and Great Britain had played a major role in a 1953 coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian head of state and installed the dictatorial Shah in his place. Twenty-five years later, the Shah fled from revolution to the United States, and the Iranian fundamentalists who seized control of the country demanded that he be returned to face trial for presiding over a regime of widespread torture and arbitrary execution. Otherwise, they said, they would kill the hostages.
Affleck, working with Oscar nominees Rodrigo Prieto ("Brokeback Mountain") as cinematographer and William Goldenberg ("Heat") as editor, does a masterful job of intercutting real news footage with dramatized action to thrust the viewer into the middle of the Iranian revolution. At one point, Mendez leads the six Americans on a "location scouting" tour of the chaotic, mobbed streets of Tehran, and the resulting scenes (actually filmed in Istanbul) are fearful and claustrophobic.
Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, a couple of old movie hands, played with zest by John Goodman and Alan Arkin, are busily creating the illusion that a flamboyant action film entitled "Argo" actually exists, and that it absolutely requires footage of the Iranian desert and the streets of Tehran. The first-rate script by Chris Terrio turns comedic when Arkin and Goodman are on screen, but the tension of the deadly serious game being played in the Middle East never fades away.
I recommend staying for the final credits. Still photos comparing scenes and characters in the film with their historical counterparts provide fascinating perspective, and the brief voiceover by former President Jimmy Carter gives an idea of just how much of this remarkable story is actually true.
Opens Friday Oct. 12
'Seven Psychopaths'
"Seven Psychopaths," which owes a large debt to the nonchalant brutality of Quentin Tarantino, is about half a good movie. It opens cleverly with two hit men casually discussing their current assignment when they are suddenly hoist, as it were, on their own petards. Then we meet a drunken Hollywood screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who is struggling with a script called "Seven Psychopaths."
At times, as the body count around him rises, he seems to be trapped inside his own screenplay. It's all very post-modern.
The screenwriter has a couple of buddies (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) who kidnap dogs for a living. They grab a fine looking Shih Tzu, hoping for a big payoff when they return it, only to find it belongs to a big-time gangster (Woody Harrelson) who wants to kill them. From that point, many human beings are murdered, mostly by being shot in the head. For a time, this game is entertaining, but in the second half, drugs are taken and much alcohol is drunk and the movie dwindles into meandering talk. Or maybe the problem is that the premise -- wouldn't it be funny to shoot a lot of people in the head -- wears thin.
"Seven Psychopaths" was written and directed by playwright Martin McDonagh ("The Pillowman"). He first dipped his toe into the crime flick waters with "In Bruges" (2008). In that droll character study, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as hit men holed up in Belgium, waiting in vain for the heat to die down from a botched job so they can resume their professional activities. It is both funny and suspenseful, all the way through. McDonagh remains a director to keep an eye on.
Opens Friday Oct. 12