Product Description
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Based on real events, the dramatic thriller Argo chronicles the
life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which
unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis, focusing
on the little-known role that the CIA and Hollywood
played--information that was not declassified until many years
after the event. On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution
reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the
chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the
home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. Knowing it is only a
matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed,
the Canadian and American governments ask the CIA to intervene.
The CIA turns to their top "exfiltration" spet, Tony
Mendez, to come up with a plan to get the six Americans safely
out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in
the movies.
Extra Content
• Rescued from Tehran: We Were There -- President Jimmy Carter,
Tony Mendez and the actual house guests recount the real-life
harrowing experience they endured.
From .co.uk
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Set against the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980, Ben
Affleck’s Argo is a nerve-jangling footnote to the birth of
Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic. The movie opens at the
crest of the 1979 revolution--the storming of the US embassy in
Tehran, and the escape of six diplomats to the precarious safety
of the Canadian ambassador’s residence. To the rescue is Tony
Mendez--a composed CIA agent whose heroism remained classified
until 1997--and his state-approved plan to get the stranded
embassy staff out of Iran under a brazen cover story: they’re an
innocent film crew on a location hunt for the fake sci-fi
blockbuster Argo. Hollywood is usually pressed into the service
of the state in the name of comedy (either burying dictators in
Team America: World or just bad news in Barry Levinson’s
Wag the Dog), but Argo is a true story, and the tone of Affleck's
O-winning script is carefully split, sw between
ing tension in consular Tehran and a satire of the Hollywood
machine as fronted by Alan Arkin and John Goodman--two raffish
producers hired by Mendez to reverse-engineer some convincing
buzz for the Argo movie. Affleck himself takes the role of
Mendez, the steady-eyed agent betting everything on Hollywood’s
age-old efficiency at creating a media circus for a project long
before it exists. ‘History starts out as farce and ends up a
tragedy’, remarks Goodman, but Argo ends on a patriotic upbeat,
and doesn’t reflect much on history. It politely nods at the
context of Iran’s attitude to the West, and we’re told about but
not shown--bar the blank rage of the revolutionary mob--Iran’s
anger at the Westerly flow of resources under Shah Pahlavi.
Instead, Argo concentrates on the eggshell complexities of
deception in plain , including a climactic set-piece in
which Mendez’ team must fend their way through layers of
suspicious Iranian airport security--with imminent capture,
execution and political calamity only on the other side of their
paper-thin pretext. It may have the ring of historical escapism,
but Argo holds its nerve as a great Hollywood escape. --Leo
Batchelor
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