by DAVID EDELSTEIN
Ben Affleck mashes up political thrills with movie-business satire in Argo.
Ben Affleck’s third thriller, Argo, is a marvel of cunning, an irresistible blend of cool realism and Hollywood hokum. It opens with a dose of fact, a female narrator’s sober recitation of the U.S. role in the 1953 Iranian coup that installed our best bud, the shah, and the coming of the Shiite revolution and the ayatollah. Noam Chomsky would nod along: It’s solid anti-imperialist stuff. Then comes another view, a blast of what a Newsweek cover labeled “Muslim Rage,” a mob converging on Tehran’s American Embassy to rend Our People limb from limb. Affleck intercuts real footage of the 1979 takeover with expert reenactments. We’re sold: This is how it was.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w918Eh3fij0
(Thanks to Mansoor Gowani)