I don't know which is more amazing - that Argo is based on a true story, or that it's taken over thirty years to tell this story. Either way, it's a cracking story.
It's set in 1980, just after the Iranian revolution had ousted the Shah. Demonstrations were happening all over Tehran, and one such demonstration at the US Embassy threatened the lives of everyone inside. While most Embassy workers fretted about what to do, six managed to escape to the nearby home of the Canadian ambassador, where they hid out for over two months while American officials dreamed up various schemes to get them out.
Ben Affleck plays a CIA extraction expert, and together with a genuine Hollywood producer and director, puts together a fake film project. Affleck then enters Iran posing as a film producer to meet the six embassy staff whom he enlists as location scouts for his "film".
Argo starts with a brief history of the troubles in Iran, and the various interferences run by US Governments and the CIA. With such a checkered history, and the benefit of hindsight, it seems a pretty dangerous job being an embassy worker.
The tension is non-stop, with the chances of the lone Affleck plucking the nervous team of embassy workers from the clutches of the heavily armed revolutionaries seeming very distant.
In the end, this is an exciting revelation of recent history.
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