Episode 78 - Argo

Argo [BLEEP] this movie! The only thing funny about Ben Affleck's
muddled film "Argo" about the Iran hostage crisis is that it's
obviously a thinly disguised C.I.A. propaganda piece. Perhaps the
Academy chose it as the 2012 Best Picture winner in the interests
of national security.


The story focuses on Tony Mendez, a C.I.A. "exfiltration expert,"
who's tasked with secretly and safely extracting six Americans
who evaded capture during the seizure of the U.S. embassy in
Tehran. In what is now known as the "Canadian Caper," Mendez
helped pull off a covert rescue mission where those six American
embassy staffers posed as a Canadian film crew on a
location-scouting trip. Canada was integral to this operation,
but Ben Affleck would have you believe it was solely the result
of good ol'-fashioned American ingenuity. 


The very-non-Mexican Ben Affleck plays Mendez. He barely
registers as a human, so you almost don't notice him. That's
Affleck's acting we're referring to. His character also seems to
have some sappy backstory where he's estranged from his wife and
son, and this is supposed to be triumphant at the end, even
though it's unexplored, untrue, and ultimately comically
unearned.


Bryan Cranston plays Mendez' C.I.A. superior whose entire
character is to give the audience expositional information and to
scramble around frantically behind the scenes to make stuff more
suspenseful.


Alan Arkin plays famed movie producer Lester Siegel (a wholly
invented character for no reason), and Arkin somehow got a Best
Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for playing the 'old man says
dirty stuff and it's funny, ain't it?" stock character that’s in
a lot of movies. Didn't he already win an Oscar for barely
showing up in a movie playing the same character?


John Goodman plays the real-life legendary Hollywood makeup
artist John Chambers, who helps Ben Affleck's character whip up
this "fake movie" scheme. In real life, his involvement with the
plan was much deeper, but in this movie, he seems to only serve
the function of "guy who answers the phone later just in case."
What a waste of the always underrated Goodman's talents. 


Eventually, everything culminates in a pot-boiler third act that
is so laboriously labyrinthine, it instead feels like a watched
pot that never boils. 


Join us as we break down all the facts this movie changed for its
own benefit, groan at how this movie is yet again Hollywood
writing a love letter to itself, and wonder if the Canadian
ambassador who helped these Americans was secretly only
interested in having an orgy with them.


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This episode is sponsored by Stuffed Farms.


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