Plot November 4, 1979. As the US Embassy in post-revolution Tehran falls to a mob of Ayatollah-supporting students, six officers slip out and seek sanctuary with the Canadians. It is up to the CIA’s Tony Mendez (Affleck) to extract them from the country before they are discovered by the Revolutionary Guards. The plan? Create a fake movie, called Argo, and pretend they’re the crew.
Verdict An old-school espionage thriller with a movie-biz comedy twist, all the better for being (almost) entirely true. It is to Ben Affleck’s credit that the tension and laughs complement rather than neutralise each other.
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