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Oscar catch-up: ‘Argo’

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argo

“Argo” is like the best episode of “Mission: Impossible” ever filmed.

I swear I’m not disrespecting the Best Picture Oscar-nominated film, it’s based-on-a-true-story subject matter or its director and star, Ben Affleck.

But I had a real sense of deja vu while watching this smart and tense thriller of old episodes of the TV series, in which a covert operative would organize a team to pull off a mission in a foreign country. There would be assumed identities, disguises, bluffs, a trial run that went badly and a final gambit that looked to be falling apart before everything came out okay.

In “Argo,” Affleck plays a CIA agent who comes up with a daring plan: When the American embassy in Iran falls to militants in 1979, most of the staff is captured and held for more than 400 days.

But a half-dozen staff members get out and are hidden in the house of the Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Affleck goes in, posing as a Hollywood moviemaker scouting locations in Iran for a big-budget science fiction movie called “Argo.”

Before Affleck gets there, the CIA recruits two old Hollywood hands – the Oscar-winning makeup artist behind “Planet of the Apes,” John Chambers (John Goodman), and wry producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) – to make the movie look real. They put together a script, storyboards, cast performers and even stage publicity for “Argo.”

It all pays off in the end, as Affleck sneaks the embassy workers out of the country after convincing the Iranian military they’re only been in Iran for a couple of days to scout locations.

As enjoyable as the set-up, poking fun at Hollywood, is, the scenes set in Iran are tense and nervous-making. We know the outcome but we’re still absorbed.

Affleck and the actors playing the embassy workers do a good job, as does Garber as the brave Canadian politician.

Standout roles go to Goodman and Arkin, however. I just wish we got to see more of them.

A few random observations:

As a longtime movie fan, I would have loved to have seen more from the world of Goodman and Arkin’s characters. A prequel or sequel maybe? I’m serious. I would go to a movie watching these guys move through the fringes of Hollywood circles.

The movie does a great job of recreating 1979. Seriously, I forgot how damn big eyeglasses were back then. And the smoking – people smoke everywhere, including airplanes.

A lot of people talk about how many current movies are too long. At right around two hours. “Argo” feels too short, almost hurried. We were at the airport and the climactic moments almost before I knew it.

There’s been some talk that Affleck was “robbed” of an Oscar nomination and is seeing some cinema justice with other awards. He probably deserved a director’s nod.

There’s no comparison between this movie and another based-on-true-events spy thriller, “Zero Dark Thirty.” “Argo” is much more accessible, more crowd-pleasing and less morally ambiguous. I think I liked “Zero Dark Thirty” better, though.

Oscar catch-up: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

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zero-dark-thirty

In which I try to see a few Oscar nominated movies before the Oscars roll around.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” has picked up a lot of political baggage, much of it centered around the film’s early scenes of CIA operatives using waterboarding and other means of torture to try to extract knowledge of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden from low-to-mid-level al Qaeda operatives.

The scenes are pretty harrowing and few moviegoers will go away without an opinion of the use of torture. Suffice it to say the scenes also set the tone for the movie even as they serve to introduce Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA analyst who goes from standing by and watching colleague Dan (Jason Clarke) administer torture to ordering punishment herself.

Maya’s quarry is bin Laden and, over the course of the next two hours, she pursues not sightings of the al Qaeda leader – there aren’t any legitimate ones – but the identity and whereabouts of people who might have contact with him.

Over the course of several years, Maya and fellow operatives like Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) interrogate those with knowledge of bin Laden and those protecting him, cultivate sources and begin to focus – obsessively, at times, for Maya – on a courier who is reportedly bin Laden’s connection to the outside world.

As most of the world knows, the CIA finally finds the courier and tracks him to a Pakistani town and fortress-like compound where bin Laden has been hiding … well, not in plain sight, but in a far more likely location than a remote cave for the leader of an international terror organization.

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal let the story unfold at a deliberate pace but pepper it with suspenseful scenes, including Jessica’s meeting at an Afghan base with a potential informant as well as the tracking of the courier.

It surprised me, somewhat, to see “Zero Dark Thirty” described online as a spy thriller. It is, certainly, but aside from the raid on bin Laden’s compound the movie came across most like a political thriller as Maya pushes her way through CIA bureaucracy, the doubts of her superiors and what seems like a more urgent mission for many in government than finding bin Laden: preventing future terror attacks.

Chastain is quite good as the smart and dedicated Maya, a character based on the woman who led the decade-long pursuit of bin Laden.

The movie features a cast of familiar faces, from Mark Strong (“Green Lantern”) and Harold Parrineau (“Lost”) to Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation”) and Joel Edgerton (the “Star Wars” prequels). Luckily, they don’t pull the audience out of the story.

“Zero Dark Thirty” is a first-rate political and historical thriller.