Film review by John Campbell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESR382L7Wo
You need not have been around at the time to know what happens at the end of this movie; its outcome is prefaced in promos and on the poster. And yet, despite being fully cognisant of this, the climax had me on the edge of my seat.
In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries, with Ayatollah Khomeini as their spiritual leader, seized power in Teheran. The mob occupied the US Embassy, but six Foreign Office workers fled to the nearby residence of the Canadian ambassador.
An introductory explanation of events leading up to these tumultuous times does not try to rewrite history by arguing that the US-backed Shah was anything but an utter bastard. It merely sets the scene for what is a nail-biting, classic escape flick.
Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directed) is the agent who lobbies for ‘the best worst idea that the CIA could come up with’ to get the six Americans back home. Calling on Oscar-winning make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and maverick producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), he forms a Canadian production company with the publicised intention of shooting a sci-fi epic in Iran. The plan is for him to arrive in Teheran and provide the Six with new passports and roles as writer, cameraman, costume designer etc, and then fly them back to Canada.
Archival news footage is shrewdly used to establish authenticity (Russia had just invaded the benighted Afghanistan), but some of the best, and lighter, moments come when old stagers Goodman and Arkin are given free rein to take the Mickey out of Hollywood – ‘John Wayne in the ground only six months and look at the mess we’re in!’ In fact, throughout, there is an acute self-awareness of how reality is presented on the screen. A street full of experienced extras can’t quite replicate the frenzied hatred of people manipulated by religious zealots and fuelled by the conviction that all of their social and economic problems are caused by an outsider (America), but this is otherwise fantastic.
