Spy story is the real deal

Argo (15)
Running time 120 minutes
Rating:****
Just occasionally, a true story can give cinema audiences more excitement, tension and satisfaction than a dreamed-up fantasy straight from the top drawer of a Hollywood studio.
Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, takes the story of the 1980 US Embassy drama in Iran, and strips it down to a bare, documentary-style film of how six US Embassy employees were smuggled out of the country under the noses of the Revolutionary Guard.
Hitting British screens just a few weeks after the latest Bond caper Skyfall, it is hard to avoid comparisons of how fake spies work and how real ones – such as the main character in Argo – slip quietly under the radar and do a nasty job without fuss or obvious drama.
Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a real-life CIA expert in extracting people from ticklish situations. Even so, extracting six Americans from the Canadian Ambassador’s house in Tehran, in the midst of a violent anti-America regime change, is not entirely standard fare for the spy.
Mendez – who looks like a college teacher – comes up with the idea of producing a fake film and pretending the Americans are the crew on a location shoot in Iran.
Argo, the name of the bogus movie, is given all the bona fides it needs from genuine Hollywood executives John Chambers and Lester Seigel, played by John Goodman and Alan Arkin respectively.
The fake film has actors, a script, a promotional launch, even publicity stunts, all paid for by the CIA, who, if they were honest, think Mendez’s idea is a crock of ordure, and actually prefer a scheme to get the six escapees to bicycle some 300 miles out of Iran, in winter.
Still, the plan goes ahead and the tension in the film builds nicely as time starts to run out for the fugitives, as the Iranian security people – certain to torture them if they catch them – close in.
It’s rare to have such genuine tension in a true-life film, and, it must be said some extra elements were introduced by Affleck to keep the tension bubbling along. But this doesn’t really matter, for this is a lean, meticulous, and wonderfully constructed story that uses occasional flashes of grim humour to lighten the load.
As well as Mendez, the other heroes of the tale are the Canadians, who offered sanctuary to the six Americans after they had fled from the back door of the US Embassy as the Revolutionary Guards burst in through the front.
The Canadians offered help when others didn’t, and the true story of the escape was buried in Top Secret files for many years.
It’s a cracker of a story, showing how real, inconspicuous spies work