You know, Ben Affleck is a pretty good director. Remember the meme about how Matt Damon probably only wrote Good Will Hunting and Affleck just put his name on it? Over the years, it seems increasingly like it might be the reverse. That being said, while Argo is a tense, often exciting film, it also has hallmarks of Hollywoodization to up the tension in ways that betray its efforts to act like its playing things straight, taking what could have been a lower key and effective thriller into one that just feels a little too manufactured to be believable.

With the fall of the Shah and the rise of Khomeini in Iran, anti-American feelings are rampant to the point of rioting and the mob running over the defenses of the American consulate in Tehran and taking dozens of people hostage, six getting out a back way and finding shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Word gets back to the American government, and the State Department wants to take charge of the rescue of the six, bringing in the CIA in to the planning session to get their signoff. The CIA is represented by the deputy director Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston) who brings in his best extraction man, Tony Mendez (Affleck), who explains that their plan for a 500 mile bike trip out of Iran is ludicrous, eventually coming up with the idea of using a Hollywood movie production as cover for the six to get them out.

One of my issues with the film is the tonal whiplash that Affleck doesn't manage all that well between these Hollywood scenes, which are colorful and satiric, with the more grounded look of six people hiding in a house in the middle of a revolution that wants them found and hanging by the necks from construction cranes. Affleck tries to smooth the transitions, in particular in a scene where John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) arrange a media event where a cast, decked out in crazy costumes, reads the script for their fake movie, the eponymous Argo, while a woman in a hijab talks about how they're going to murder all the Americans and the Great Satan. It's a weird contrast that I don't think Affleck handles all that well.

After that, the film enters more of a purely thriller territory, and the action as Affleck gets into Iran through a commercial flight, negotiates official Iranian government channels with his front as a Canadian film producer meeting culture ministers and then meeting the six and convincing them to follow his cover story. Where this film works best is right in here because it feels the most real. There are serious concerns from some of the six, most notably Joe Stafford (Scoot McNairy) about the plan in general, but they have no real choices and start the process, stepping outside the ambassador's house for the first time in two months. This stuff is tense and elevated in realistic ways where they walk into crowds that feel like they could always just break out into violence because, despite their cover stories, the seven white faces don't belong.

The actual escape ends up feeling so elevated, though, that it removes the action from the real of reality. It's a long series of little things that could go wrong, almost go wrong, and then turn out okay with a chase down the tarmac that feels cartoonish to end it all. I wouldn't call it ineffective, but it feels more like something from a Bond or Bourne film than this kind of realistic portrait of a real spy operation.

So, it overall ends up an entertaining jaunt. Affleck is able to capture what seems to be the physical reality of Tehran in a terrible moment, Hollywood in the late 70s, and the bowels of the CIA (which he apparently got access to film in because the CIA needed a cultural win, gosh darn it). The tense moments all work at different levels (the opening sequence probably the best bit of the whole thing), though its diffuse approach to character (there are a lot) prevents a really solid grounding in one in particular, especially since the main character, Mendez, is a man of business without any kind of character arc or emotional involvement. He's a man on a mission, accepting his danger professionally.

It's an entertaining look at a hidden slice of history in an interesting time. It's well handled by Affleck, well-performed by everyone, and looks good. It just betrays its realistic milieu by amping things up beyond the reasonable which, I think, holds it back a bit. Still, it's a good time at the movies.