Ben Affleck is star and director to Argo, a competently made true-to-life thriller that is, I'll tell you upfront, deserves an award. He plays Tony Mendez, a CIA "exfiltration" specialist hired to devise a plan to smuggle six American escapees from the ordeal of the Iranian Revolution back to America. The year is 1979. Inspired by his fanboy son's appreciation of Planet of the Apes, Mendez suggests to make a fake science-fiction movie and make the escapees pretend they are a Canadian film crew scouting locations. It doesn't sound like a plan, but as reluctant deputy director Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston) puts it, "This is the best bad idea we have, sir.".
Greenlighted, the plan required the help of the legendary Spock's (from Star Trek) ears creator and make-up artist John Chambers (cheerily played by John Goodman) and the cranky award-winning movie producer Lester Siegel (nailed by Alan Arkin), to make the prep-stages of the movie and then move forward with the operation. Affleck's sense of realism is there, with sharp attention from the very little details, and the effort to weave a competent story out of a real tale that is, in accordance to the nature of reality, absurd. One can think of Affleck as a molded figure, gradually chiseled and detailed until he reaches near-perfection - which is this.
One notable flaw here, though, is the main character, Mendez. Everything else in the film is distinct, with it, as the only exception. It could be Heights filmmaker Chris Terrio's script, or Affleck himself - or honestly maybe a little bit of both. Mendez was wrought to appear as a toned-down version of what is expected of him, slightly exacerbated by Affleck's rather subdued performance. This leaves the idea of him being too blank to even like; and also the ongoing discussion of how Affleck is a better director than he is an actor. Either way, Affleck's passion for the field is estimable, we grasp how he likes his job, consistently making movies that matter and without question, slick. He's done Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Bostonian-set thrillers that are legitimately efficient.
What he does, as a director in Argo, an obvious different direction for him, makes you forget that he starred in that terrible superhero film Daredevil - to which I still laugh my ass on - and how he gains your respect with only the first few frames with this film. He makes the film engrossing by throwing in humor that frequently balances with the nail-biting tension that is naturally within the film, also contrasting this, so when the intense hits. It "hits" hits. I don't know about you, but if I watched this, and I dismiss the idea that this will end up in Oscars, oh "ARGO fuck myself.". A
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