There are some decisions that people look back on and think ‘why?’ Why did I get that haircut? Why did I buy those clothes? Why did I vote Argo for best picture at The Academy Awards? Anybody who did the last (luckily very few of my lovely readers fall into this category) are bound to be laughed at by friends, scowled at family events, and generally treated like the film illiterate misfits they clearly are.
There is an established trend of the wrong film getting the Oscar: Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas in 1990, Forest Gump over Pulp Fiction in 1994, and now we can add Argo over The Majority Of The Films Nominated in 2013. Years from now, Argo is destined to feature in a lazy article, bashed out over lunch by a movie hack, entitled ‘movies that nobody remembers’. We will all look very silly.
That isn’t to say that Argo is a train wreck, it’s not on the steaming piles of dog turd level of The Last Stand, it’s just bland. like the 70’s, the era in which the film is set, it’s mainly beige - it isn’t going to make you convulse or vomit, it’ll just leave you unsatisfied, like a panda’s man bits (google that).
Oscar stealing aside, the film is pretty competent. It is the, true (wikipedia), story of the escape attempt of a bunch of Americans who found themselves holed up in the Canadian embassy following the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That attempt was genuinely batshit crazy, and does make for fun viewing. The acting also is generally competent, particularly Ben Affleck, and the pacing and sense of tension is well managed. It’s not as good as good as a lot of other films, even in the same genre (see below), but you probably won't regret watching it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call ‘damning with faint praise’.
Watch if you liked: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
If you liked this watch: Munich
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