File Argo under "so crazy, it has to be real." The trailer for the audacious spy picture just released, and it looks like star/director Ben Affleck will be able to top what he did in The Town.
Set in 1979, Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a CIA employee whose division specializes in doctoring fake identities, credentials, and all sorts of creative wizardry. When Iranian revolutionaries took embassy employees hostage that November, six managed to escape, eventually hiding out in the Canadian embassy. Mendez came up with a crazy idea--have the six people pass as members of a film crew scouting a project. An actual sci-fi script, titled Argo, was found, a production office set up, and ads announcing production were placed in The Hollywood Reporter. The ruse worked, and the recently declassified story became the subject of a thrilling 2007 "Wired" story, "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran."
Compared to what actually happened, it appears that Argo raises the stakes. "Wired" describes the passengers calmly boarding the plane without detection. The trailer shows soldiers running through the airport in hot pursuit, and vehicles chasing after a plane as it lifts off the runway. Talk about giving away the ending.
Argo comes off as a real-life Ocean's Eleven or Catch Me If You Can. It's also reminiscent of previous projects from producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, who favor wacky situations involving politics, spies, and the Middle East (epitomized by The Men Who Stare at Goats).
The trailer emphasizes the larger-than-life personalities of Hollywood producers, but there's a lot of material from the "Wired" article that's just as entertaining. Iranian government officials (successfully) hired carpet weavers to reassemble shredded documents from the embassy. Mendez's group, the Office of Technical Service, succeeded by pulling off tricks like putting microphones on cats. He also had contacts in Hollywood--most likely to help with unusual makeup or forgery--that helped him come up with the idea in the first place.
The Warner Bros. project looks like first-rate entertainment, full of American ingenuity and scored to Aerosmith's "Dream On." It seems like the perfect popcorn movie, but viewers will have to wait for this one until October 12.
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