Argo

Ben Affleck’s “Argo” provides a great deal of nerve-racking thrills as well as funnier scenes than you can ever imagine possible in the grim context of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.

For those of you who do not know what happened back in the days, here is a quick history lesson. 52 employees of the American Embassy in Tehran were held captive for 444 days by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini after the country’s ailing longtime ruler, the shah, fled Iran for asylum in the US.

The film focuses on six employees of the American Embassy who tried to flee into the streets when their embassy was invaded and occupied by a furious mob of students. The escapees were hidden in the residence of the courageous Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garver) for nearly 3 months, and at great personal risk.

The true story of how they finally flee from Iran- by posing as the Canadian crew of a fake science-fiction film led by a fearless CIA agent. This ridiculous and dangerous-sounding scheme is the brainchild of the CIA agent, an extraction expert named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck).

In order to concoct a convincing cover story that would trick Iranians aggressively searching for the unaccounted-for Americans, Mendez asks his friend John Chambers (John Goodman), an Oscar-winning makeup master, to do him a favour and invites a veteran movie producer.

The three of them immediately comes up with a script for a star wars ripoff call “Argo”. This is the funniest moment of the movie – “You can teach a rhesus monkey how to direct.” Chambers tells Mendez – it is great to keep the humor from drowning the suspense he has been building in the previous scenes. Ben Affleck aces the tonal shifts perfectly that it is shocking this is only his third movie as a director – if you did not know this, you would think this was the work of a master director like Steven Spielberg.

With lack of options, the White House constrainedly agree to send Mendez off to Tehran on this crazy...