Argo - Best Picture, Oscar 2013!25/02/2013
Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage thriller Argo rode to victory at the 85th Academy Awards as it took home the coveted best picture trophy. Argo received seven nominations for the 85th Academy Awards and won three, for Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. The film also earned won Best Picture award at the Golden Globe and the BAFTA.
Argo is a dramatization of and is based on a 2007 article about the "Canadian Caper", in which Tony Mendez, a CIA operative, led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The film stars Affleck as Mendez with Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman. Militants storm the United States embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, in retaliation for CIA involvements in Iran. More than 50 of the embassy staff are taken as hostages, but six escape and hide in the home of the Canadian ambassador. With the escapees' situation kept secret, the US State Department begins to explore options for "exfiltrating" them from Iran. Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a CIA exfiltration specialist brought in for consultation, criticizes the proposals. He too is at a loss for an alternative until, inspired by watching Battle for the Planet of the Apes on the phone with his son, he plans to create a cover story that the escapees are Canadian filmmakers, scouting "exotic" locations in Iran for a similar science-fiction film. Mendez and his supervisor Jack O'Donnell contact John Chambers, a Hollywood make-up artist. Chambers puts them in touch with film producer Lester Siegel. Together they set up a phony film studio, publicize their plans, and successfully establish the pretense of developing Argo, a "science fantasy". Meanwhile, the escapees grow frantic inside the ambassador's residence. The revolutionaries reassemble embassy papers shredded before the takeover and learn that some personnel have escaped. Posing as a producer for Argo, Mendez enters Iran and links up with the six escapees. He provides them with Canadian passports and fake identities. Although afraid to trust Mendez's scheme, they reluctantly go along with it, knowing that he is risking his own life too. Mendez is told that the operation has been cancelled to avoid conflicting with a planned military rescue of the hostages. He pushes ahead, forcing O'Donnell to hastily re-obtain authorization for the mission to get tickets on a Swissair flight. Tension rises at the airport, where the escapees' flight reservations are confirmed at the last minute, and a guard's call to the supposed studio in Hollywood is answered at the last second. The group boards the plane just as the Iranian guards uncover the ruse and try to stop their plane from getting off the runway, but they are too late, as Mendez and the six successfully leave Iran. To protect the hostages remaining in Tehran from retaliation, all US involvement in the rescue is suppressed, giving full credit to the Canadian government and its ambassador (who left Iran with his wife under their own credentials as the operation was underway). Mendez is awarded the Intelligence Star, but due to the classified nature of the mission, he would not be able to keep the medal until the details were made public in 1997. All the hostages were freed on January 20, 1981. The film ends with President Jimmy Carter's speech about the Crisis and the Canadian Caper. |
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