Argo Blu-ray

Product Description

Please note this is a region B Blu-ray & will require a region B or region free Blu-ray player in order to play Set against the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 & 1980 Ben Affleck’s Argo is a nerve-jangling footnote to the birth of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic The movie opens at the crest of the 1979 revolution--the storming of the US embassy in Tehran & the escape of six diplomats to the precarious safety of the Canadian ambassador’s residence To the rescue is Tony Mendez--a composed CIA agent whose heroism remained classified until 1997--and his state-approved plan to get the stranded embassy staff out of Iran under a brazen cover story they’re an innocent film crew on a location hunt for the fake sci-fi blockbuster Argo Hollywood is usually pressed into the service of the state in the name of comedy (either burying dictators in Team America World Police or just bad news in Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog) but Argo is a true story & the tone of Affleck&s Oscar-winning script is carefully split switching between mounting tension in consular Tehran & a satire of the Hollywood machine as fronted by Alan Arkin & John Goodman--two raffish producers hired by Mendez to reverse-engineer some convincing buzz for the Argo movie Affleck himself takes the role of Mendez the steady-eyed agent betting everything on Hollywood’s age-old efficiency at creating a media circus for a project long before it exists ‘ History starts out as farce & ends up a tragedy’ remarks Goodman but Argo ends on a patriotic upbeat & doesn’t reflect much on history It politely nods at the context of Iran’s attitude to the West & we’re told about but not shown--bar the blank rage of the revolutionary mob--Iran’s anger at the Westerly flow of resources under Shah Pahlavi Instead Argo concentrates on the eggshell complexities of deception in plain sight including a climactic set-piece in which Mendez’ team must fend their way through layers of suspicious Iranian airport security--with imminent capture execution & political calamity only on the other side of their paper-thin pretext It may have the ring of historical escapism but Argo holds its nerve as a great Hollywood escape