argo: the united states does not negotiate with terrorists.

it is a testament to my long involvement in film and theatre that two of the things that stood out most to me about ben affleck's newly released historical thriller, argo, were the cinematography and the sound design, both of which served the story eminently. that and the fact that i felt suspense throughout the movie, despite always knowing how it would end.

it begins with a summary of events leading up to the iran hostage crisis of 1979, explaining how the shah, put in power in a 1953 cia-engineered coup against the democratically elected iranian government, had terrorized the people of iran and lived in opulence as his subjects starved.  by the end of the 70s, the people had had enough; they rebelled and the shah fled, seeking asylum in the united states. the iranian people demanded the us return the shat to them so that they could sentence him as a a criminal. when the us government refused, they stormed the gates of the embassy, taking fifty-two american hostages.

this movie does not deal with these fifty-two americans, but rather with the efforts of tony mendez (ben affleck) to get six americans who escaped the embassy out of the country. replete with many brooding close-ups of the bearded affleck, it is a stark, tense movie with scarcely a flourish, unless you count the witty one-liners, most of which are featured in the trailer. it tells the story as it happened (according to mendez's accounts) and no more.

this is the movie's key failing: faced with the telling of a story of one of the biggest foreign policy crises the us has faced, it asks no questions, draws no parallels or conclusions, offers no criticism or insight.

but to me the implications are obvious, inescapable. this movie cannnot be a celebration of a united states intelligence triumph (though it seems to aspire to it) when it draws (intentionally or un-) the hypocrisy of the us government's cliched slogan "we do not negotiate with terrorists" into sharp relief against the truth: that the us government created those "terrorists".

by failing to reckon with this conflict, between one's national identity and pride and the horrible things that country has done, this movie missed it's chance at greatness. to be fair, had the script made less obvious the cause-effect relationship between the us and this crisis, perhaps the movie could have avoided this politic-y trap altogether. but it is my opinion that it would have been equally hollow; telling a story but lacking purpose, or direction, and, at the end of the day, doomed to the fuzzy no-man's land of those without conviction.