Political Film Evaluation: Argo

Political Film Evaluation: Argo

Back in the late 1970s the United States gave asylum to the shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, angering Iranian activists which lead to an overturn of the United States embassy in Tehran. Over 50 people were taken as hostages, but six were able to escape and find shelter in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Their location and situation was kept a secret from everyone except the family members and the governmental figures who were needed to get them out. The film takes us on the nail-bitting, edge of your seat adventure of Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), and the six escapees who are now pretending to be in Iran for a location scavenger hunt for their upcoming movie Argo. There were many different scenes that were very hair-raising, the beginning when the embassy was just broken into, a small scene where Mendez and O’Donnell are talking and Mendez mentions a form of torture used in Iran, the re-approval of the plan after it was called off, and of course the last 30 minutes of the film that has you rocking back and forth wandering if they will make it out of Iran. Sometimes we don’t realize the type of horrible things that happen outside of our “white-picket-fence” of a country, and Argo definitely made me open my eyes to the incredibly shocking reality of the world outside of America’s comfort zone.

The first scene I’m discussing is the Unites States Embassy being broken into. Here in the United States we see protests every day, peaceful protests and not so peaceful ones like our most recent big protest in Ferguson. But even though people here are tired of the police brutality, it really doesn’t compare to the rage shown in this movie. The Iranian people were outraged that the United states gave asylum to the shah, they were angry and wanted him back in order to torture him. They jumped the fences into the embassy and then broke the chains that held the gates closed, broke the glass to get in and began to blindfold and tie people up. it was quite a strong scene. and you hear them saying to the yards to not shoot unless they want to start a war, and to leave tear gasses as a last resort because after all they are on a foreign land. The New York Times reviewed the movie and said that the endangering of American lives was “a situation that contemporary viewers will be all too familiar with”, and argued that at the same time it gave it that cinematic chaos that is expected from hollywood. So in a way it argued for and against it being biased, They mainly thought it was very on point historically, yet it had those twists and turns that made it hollywood after all, the exaggerations of certain things and the nail-bitting, seconds-away-from-being-caught scenarios that probably pushed it a little past believable.

Now the second scene I’m discussing today is probably the simplest, least significant one in the whole movie, but it’s one that definitely got me thinking and stuck with me trough the film. Mendez and O’Donnell are having a discussion over the phone after they were approved for the location scout, and Tony says to Jack “How well do you think their covers are gonna hold up when they're getting their fingernails pulled out?” (Argo). That was definitely show stopping for me because it made me realize that in other countries torture is still an acceptable punishment, where as to in the United States it is Illegal. Roger Ebert talk about this a bit in his review for Argo, He also mentions the “obvious hollywood that was brought into this real-life situation” yet it showed the reality other countries live on a day-to-day basis.

This next scene was very sad and disappointing to me, because it showed that the United States cared more about the bad publicity the CIA could have gotten if the plan failed rather than the lives of the people at risk if the plan were

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