Argo was one of the big winners at this month’s awards season. To put it simply, this was a movie about Americans, by Americans, for Americans.
Argo isn’t a terrible film at all. It is very well made and some dialogue is very well done. The film has been given a distinctive style from Ben Affleck, which is quite entertaining and overall the plot is good at building tension. I especially enjoyed the way Affleck created the 70’s/80’s look for each of the characters and the set. He captured the time period extremely well.However it didn’t feel Oscar worthy. It didn’t feel like an award-winning film.
Easily the main reason that I didn’t find Argo too enjoyable was the memorable acting of Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck’s performance in Argo is one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in a movie, especially of this caliber. I don’t think Affleck’s face moved, once during the entire film. You see Ben’s face in the poster? That’s the face of Ben Affleck for two hours, save for a smirk every now and again. I understand that for a third of the film he’s trying to look normal and act cool, but even during his break-down scene, he has the expressionless face. An award-winning film should surely have a strong lead. I presume that no one wanted to tell the director how much of a poor job he was doing.
Another main problem was that Argo in general seemed to have an agenda and therefore was predictable. It was like the CIA and America could do no wrong in Argo and any hardships faced could be dealt with solely by them. This meant that no matter what danger the group were in, no matter how tense Affleck tried to make it, it was always undercut by the fact that the CIA would win. It was so obviously structured that it became boring.
The way that the facts were skewed in Argo also suggested that they had an agenda. I know that the term “based on a true story” means almost nothing in Hollywood but the way that the story of Argo was told was a little bit too American for my liking. Britain weren’t given any credit whatsoever in the film and Canada’s role in the film was drastically downplayed. However if this film was about Britain and MI6, I’m sure the British public wouldn’t mind the facts being changed at all.
I give Argo a 5 out of 10 for it’s distinctive periodic style, good dialogue at times and for Ben Affleck’s terrible performance
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