On November 4th 1979, Iranian students and militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and

took 52 Americans as hostages for more than a year. However, 6 Americans escaped from the
embassy while the siege was in progress. They managed to find shelter in the home of the
Canadian Ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor and laid low for more than 2 months. It was only a
matter of time before the Iranians would discover the 6 missing Americans. The State
Department and the CIA needed to safely get these 6 Americans secretly out of Iran, avoiding
Iranian intelligence and thus, without endangering the lives of the other 52 American hostages.
CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) teams up with Hollywood make-up artist John
Chambers and producer Lester Siegal to go into Tehran posing as a Canadian film crew scouting
for locations, meet up with the 6 Americans, give them false identities as the crew members and
then leave Iran. The name of their fictitious film was Argo.
The script is based on factual details that was made public by the Clinton administration in 1997
and is well laid out. Since this entire episode occurred in 1979, the writer and director start off by
narrating how the CIA and British Intelligence agencies replaced the democratically elected
government with the Shah of Iran, which angered the general public and thus, sowed the seeds of
the Iranian Revolution. This really helps in understanding how grave the situation was, when the
US Embassy was taken over by the student revolutionaries.
As a father and a husband separated from his wife, Ben Affleck and the screenplay adds emotion
to showcase how he manages to focus on the escape plan in spite of his personal troubles. The
screenplay also brilliantly captures the emotional trauma of the six American embassy
employees, some of whom are working with their loved ones and are particularly affected. Also
noteworthy is the performance of one of the 6 Americans, who is deeply skeptical about
following the plans of a CIA agent that he has never met.

The movie is fast-paced and exciting. There are no Navy Seals, shootouts, explosions or hightech gadgets mostly seen in other spy movies. All the suspense is based on what could happen if
the 6 Americans are caught. There is always an ever-present sense of danger. The director and the
script continuously focus on the escape plan for these 6 Americans, and not on the hostages
captured in the US Embassy.
The final scene at the airport is nerve-racking and just when you thought that the Americans are
on the way to freedom, the director puts you on a roller-coaster by showing the stubborn, hesitant
Iranian soldier who begins to suspect the entire crew and their reasons for being in Iran. He
brilliantly portrays the years of mistrust built up between Iran and the USA.
The casting and makeup teams of the film deserve special mention. They recreated the look of
the original hostages with utmost detail, with the bell-bottomed trousers, the haircuts and the
oversized glasses. One can barely see any difference between the actors and the real-life
hostages, when they are shown side-by-side in the closing credits.