Prior to the release of "Argo", I had never heard of the mission to rescue the six Americans from revolutionary Iran. The movie does open by talking about how the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected prime minister and left the shah in power to create a terror state. Unfortunately, the minimal focus on this leaves little understanding as to why Iran had the revolution, let alone why the Iranians took the hostages. It's especially important to understand this history given the tense relations between Washington and Tehran.

Other than that, it's interesting seeing how they devised the plot to rescue the hostages in a scheme that involved Hollywood and the Canadian government. Even so, this was not the best movie of 2012. Even "Zero Dark Thirty" was better. "The Master", "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained" were among the best.