Argo: Iran and Movie Essay

Submitted By gmcbrid
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In 1979, anti-American feelings are increasing in Iran due to the US harboring the ailing former Shah of Iran. In November, Iranian militants, are able to break through the perimeter of the US Embassy. The staff are able to burn or shred most of their documents before they are taken hostage. The twist of the event comes when there are six embassy staff members that escaped, and managed to seek cover for the time being. The US now has to find the six of them before the Iranians do. There are many interesting plans that are thought of, but the CIA member Tony comes up with an arbitrary plan, which is to have them pretend to be a film crew scouting for locations, with Tony part of that film crew to lead the six out himself. Tony's plan not only has to fool the Iranians, but he has to fool the entire world, who need to believe that this film is actually existent. There are many barriers they have to cross, like memorizing new personalities and names overnight, and dealing with the hovering Iranians who are on the lookout for them. They also have to make sure the housekeeper watching them doesn’t realize who they are, and that the Iranians do not figure out what the six of them look like before they escape.
The film is definitely bias- but is still fairly accurate. It is bias because the film involved a lot of Canadian aid, but it is downplayed a lot in the movie. This is because the Americans want to take credit for the entire thing. However this is accurate in the way that the CIA worked to do things like remove the hostages in secret. The CIA had to fool the whole world that this wasn’t actually happening- just so they could remove the hostages without the Iranians noticing. The filmmakers stretched a lot of the story to emphasize the involvement in the US and dim down the involvement of Canada. It also works to show the intelligence and work of the CIA.
For the negative review of the film, I think the author had this viewpoint because he sees the ineffective ways we are repeating history in that the government is still fighting wars that shouldn’t be our fight and we are getting stuck in the middle of it. I agree that the movie Argo could be seen as a parallel between today and history, but I liked the movie a lot more than I disliked it. For the positive review, the author saw the movie as a great way to portray an important event in our time period, and it was a well put together movie that released the truth of a lot of our history.
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