Argo is the story of a film that never existed, a�Star Wars rip-off set in a sci-fi world with a conveniently Middle Eastern feel. If the movie ever actually made it into production, it looks like the kind of thing you'd stumble upon while doing some insomnia-fueled TV-channel flipping in the small hours of the morning: a forgotten space opera featuring sparkly costumes and melodramatic dialogue.
[PHOTOS: Ben Affleck, George Clooney and more at the NYC premiere of Argo]
But when CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) options this script, what he has in mind is not a genre movie but a rescue operation.�Argo,�Affleck's third outing as a director, heads far away from the Boston crime stories of Gone Baby Gone and�The Town ? to�Tehran in 1980, where six�American diplomats who escaped from the taking of the American embassy have been hiding out in the home of the Canadian ambassador in an increasingly perilous situation.
There are no good ways of getting them out of a country roiling with rage against the U.S. decision to grant asylum to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the recently overthrown Shah of Iran. The State Department suggests giving the six bicycles and pointing them toward the Turkish border, or passing them off as NGO workers in the country to inspect crops that aren't growing because it's winter. The plan Tony comes up with, to pass them off as a Canadian film crew, is as his boss Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston) puts it "the best bad idea" the agency has.
Argo plays out like an unlikely heist movie in which all the suspense comes from unexpected corners. It's a con in which the ultimate tense sequence involves getting through airport security, in which we root for the American "house guests"…
Camilla Belle Carla Campbell Carla Gugino Carmen Electra Carol Grow Carrie Underwood Cat Power Catherine Bell
