The opening of Argo recaps modern history between Iran and America: we wanted their oil, we crapped on their politics in order to be sure we’d get that oil, and in 1979 the people had finally had enough and kicked our puppet dictator, the Shah, out. When Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to come to the US for medical treatment, furious Iranians took out their anger on the American Embassy, and we got the endless hostage standoff. 

Argo is the story of the six Americans from the embassy who managed to flee during the takeover and hide out in the Canadian ambassador’s residence. The Iranians are very close to figuring out they don’t have all the Embassy employees they should have. If the Iranians find out the Canadians have the Americans, there’s going to be hell to pay. The Canadian government is going to close down their diplomatic mission anyhow, because the chaos is spreading and pretty soon all North Americans are going to be in the line of fire. The American government can’t do anything overt without inflaming the situation further, so the guys at State come up with plans to get the six Americans out. Such as, they can bicycle their way across Iran.

The experts over at the CIA — such as director and star Ben Affleck — tell the State Department those plans are DOA, and if they go through with it, the Americans are DOA too. At which point the challenge comes: “You have a better idea?” 

Hollywood loves having itself portrayed as the good guy, so I expect that this movie has a good shot at being Best Picture next year. I haven’t seen Lincoln and I know perfectly well Big Epic About War And Race is always a lock, but Small Action Pic About Middle East Turmoil is pretty damn relevant too. 

There are absolutely no surprises in this movie: there’s a Big Problem, there’s a Big Plan, nobody believes in the Big Plan except the little guys, there are hitches in the plan, but since we know to a T what the plan is we in the audience know how well it’s succeeding.

This movie works so damn well because of 3 things: 

1. If you remember your history of the time, or you’ve heard any of the publicity about this movie, you know how it’s going to turn out. Since we have no public schools dedicated to memory of the six Americans, you can probably guess how it turns out too. Act 3 is still wildly suspenseful. Seriously, damn good job there, Director Affleck. 
2. The direction of the action scenes is really good. You know what’s going on at all times and who’s doing what to whom. Seriously, if the whole writer-director-actor thing doesn’t work out for him, someone re-hire Matt Damon as Bourne and have Affleck direct the next one. 
3. While there are no big surprises in the storytelling, there are some definite fun little ones: historic (John Chambers: special effects guru and CIA helper-ally-facilitator!), character-based (I’ll leave that one to be the fun little twist it turns out to be, but it involves one of the six Americans), and irony-laden (the “feel-good” ending for one of the Iranian characters). 

There’s no extraneous character stuff. There’s no derring-do at the CIA (talk about your office job). Argo is reminiscent of the political thrillers of the 70s in more than just art direction (which is awesome, and have I mentioned recently how much the 70s sucked?), and it’s a nice change of pace from the bloated, moronic “political” thrillers that we usually get.

Basically, I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. If he’s in a movie, I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy it more than I might otherwise. Brick, The Lookout, 500 Days of Summer (a movie that depended on you liking him, if Zooey Deschanel is not your cup of tea), 50/50, Inception.

Also, Bruce Willis: he’s smug, he’s annoying, and he’s been known to sleepwalk through a movie. But he’s still a movie star: his sleepwalking tends to be much more interesting than most actors doing their full-out acting. 

Plus: a science-fiction story with time travel! Who wouldn’t love this? 

In the future, time travel has been invented and then made illegal, which means only the Mob is using it. (Of…course.) They send people they want dead back 30 years in time to 2044, where Loopers kill the marks and then dispose of a body in a time period where no one would be looking for the body. Eventually one of the marks sent back will be the 30-years-older version of the Looper, at which point you collect a big payday and realize you now have 30 years to live.

Caveat #1: do not think about this premise too hard. You do have to allow them the premise, though, because that’s the whole foundation of the movie.

Caveat #2: there’s another element to this movie that I think waters down the premise a little. However, since the movie depends on both caveats being true, it’s not like they could change this. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a young guy who kills marks and then gets high all day. The dystopia of 2044 is pretty bleak, and you can imagine that you might spend all your time getting high if that’s where you had to live. His future self, Bruce Willis, gets sent back in time, and Joe doesn’t kill him. Chaos ensues. 

Gordon-Levitt does an amazing interpretation of a young Bruce Willis. He’s not doing a full-on Bruce Willis imitation; there’s just a few things sprinkled here and there. I completely believed Gordon-Levitt would grow up to be Willis. He’s good. The other actors in the movie–like Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano–are also good, even in small roles. There’s one newcomer, Pierce Gagnon, who I thought was scary-remarkable.

It’s a good thing they got such good actors, because the characters are actually the weakest part of the movie. Every character has a good actor and some tics. Believe me: if a character has one tic, you are going to see it fourteen more times. I would have preferred a little more depth to any of the goings-on.

And be warned: This movie is ridiculously violent. I guess that goes along with the setup. Wow, did I close my eyes several times. 

On the way home, Darin and I discussed the plot some and why we weren’t more thrilled about the movie (which is very good, but not the 10 we’d both been expecting). And I think it is because of the time travel elements that you shouldn’t think about too hard. Because the second you do think about them, the punch of the ending (I sure hadn’t known what to expect) fades away. 

On the other hand, right now it’s a few days after we saw it and I can still tell you the whole story. I bet I’d miss few if any plot points. Which is a sign of a really tight story, and boy howdy, do we not see enough of those these days. 

Darius (Aubrey Plaza) is an intern at Seattle Magazine, and she’s so unhappy that during the first scene of the movie she’s interviewing for a waitress job at a restaurant. During an editorial meeting, Jeff the full-time journalist (Jake Johnson) pitches doing a story about a weird classified ad they saw in another publication: someone is looking for a companion for a time travel mission. Who would put this ad in the paper? What’s his story? Jeff asks for interns to take with him, and he takes Darius and Arnau (Karan Soni) with. They manage to track down the author of the ad, Kenneth (Mark Duplass). Jeff tries to volunteer for the mission, but Kenneth, who’s a little twitchy and believes he’s being followed by government agents, doesn’t trust him. So Darius steps in as the possible time travel companion. 

Safety Not Guaranteed is a story about people who don’t want to be in the situation they’re in and who want to go back to a time when things were better, or easier, or however we remember them. Darius never feels at ease in her life. Jeff wants to return to when he had no responsibilities and everything was easy. Arnau wants to be somewhere else, anywhere else. And Kenneth wants to return to…well, that’s not really that clear. (The movie’s dedication to hitting its themes in every scene, often to the point of annoyance.)

I liked the movie a lot, the way it swung between farce and pathos and had some really touching emotional stuff in it. Midway through the movie I found myself thinking, Wouldn’t it be cool if he really had a time machine? I liked the way that it’s a pretty small story (inspired by a real ad that a magazine put in its own classified ads as a lark) and doesn’t try to be more than that. The one big “action” scene is mostly hilarious (and pathetic). This is a movie that’s about people trying to get through their lives as best they can, whether it’s by being frozen (Darius), a douche (Jeff), an overachiever (Arnau), or a weirdo (Kenneth). 

The downside of the movie is that it hits the “Women just want someone who’s really sincere, to the complete disregard for whether they’re batshit insane or not.” The romance in this movie is quite touching, except for the fact that Kenneth is clearly that guy that most of us cross the street to avoid. Sweet, and totally crazy.

I definitely recommend it, though: I’m becoming quite fond of movies that don’t assault my senses, and instead make me think more about the people involved.

Also, we’re living in the Mark Duplass Decade, so get used to him. (I can’t find a link to the EW story about him, but he’s everywhere all of a sudden.)