The mission had never been called off at the last minute, forcing Tony Mendez to make a passionate call to his boss to tell him he was going through with it anyway.
In reality, the mission had always been a go ever since American President Jimmy Carter gave his approval prior to Tony taking his flight into Tehran, Iran. The real Tony Mendez woke up forty-five minutes late the morning he was to meet up with the six Americans at the airport.
He had slept through his watch alarm and was woken up when his ride to the airport had arrived and called his hotel room. He rushed to get ready and made it downstairs 15 minutes later.
The suspenseful Argo movie scene that requires Ben Affleck's character to ask the woman at the airport ticket counter to recheck for the tickets never actually happened in real life. The reservations had always been in place and there weren't any problems at the counter or the checkpoints. Tony had arrived ahead of them to make sure that he cleared customs and could check in at the airline counter without any trouble.
When the problem was resolved they took the airport bus out to where they boarded the plane and it lifted off for Zurich, Switzerland. They were not chased down the runway by the officers and Revolutionary Guard at the airport. However, they did in fact breathe a collective sigh of relief once they cleared Iranian airspace.
To celebrate their escape, they toasted with Bloody Marys. There was a moment when someone at a counter did walk away with papers that belonged to a member of the group like in the movie, but the employee only stepped away to get a cup of tea and returned shortly.
There was no need to further present a letter from the Ministry of Culture like in the movie. The man who returned with it asked him if it was indeed him in the photo, since his expression was different and his mustache was longer in the passport photo.
Lee said it was and the man believed him and let him through. As stated above, our research into the true story revealed that Tony Mendez and the six Americans were not detained at the airport.
They were not sequestered like in the movie. There was therefore no nearly missed nail-biting phone call to Studio Six Productions to verify their backgrounds. Tony also never gave Iranian officers storyboard sketches to keep as souvenirs.
Although it is not shown in the film likely to avoid confusion and to sustain believability , the actual Swissair plane that the Americans flew out on had the name "Argau" lettered on its nose. The Swissair plane had been given the name Argau after a region in Switzerland. Noticing the name on the nose as the group walked up the ramp to board the plane, Bob Anders punched Tony Mendez in the arm and said, "You arranged for everything, didn't you?
Studio Six Productions closed its doors several weeks after Tony Mendez and his team helped the six Americans escape from Iran, however, not without grabbing Hollywood's attention. The CIA's fake movie production company created such a convincing cover that it had received 26 scripts, including one from Steven Spielberg. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador's residence in Berne. It was that straightforward.
The six were meant to live in Florida under assumed names until the release of other embassy personnel held hostage in Tehran, which came in January But the plan was dropped when reports of the escape appeared in newspapers. The agency didn't admit its role until Mark says it came as a relief when he could finally talk openly about the events in Iran.
He's a fan of Argo and takes a wryly amused view of how it burnishes the truth to dramatic effect. Of course, Mark is wise to the ways of film-makers. Back in the s, he was briefly in movies himself. Success for Argo at Golden Globes. Argo triumphs at Critics Awards. Silver Linings surprise at Oscars. Argo recreates the storming of the US embassy in Tehran in November It's telling-not-showing reductio ad absurdum.
Of course, skimping on characterization to get to the storyline goodies isn't the worst thing when you've got a storyline as inherently fascinating as this one is. Affleck wants Argo to be a thriller, and it does thrill, with the danger quotient ratcheted up repeatedly by encircling Iranian forces and bungling back home. For all its setting's verisimilitude, the screenplay ditches historical facts whenever the energy could flag.
In the film's latter half, three closely nested sequences have the heroes avoiding catastrophe by seconds, and each instance sends both heart rates and eyebrows skyward.
That's fine; that's moviemaking—Arkin's character would be proud. But there's a missed opportunity here to shed some insight on this gutsy operation instead of merely restaging it with even more drama. The three months of captivity in the Canadian embassy were tense, yes—but what else? How did the six come to relate to one another? Mendez pulled off something incredible, yes—but how, exactly?
What made him the man for the job? In the end, as its credits suggest, the effect of watching Argo isn't that far off from the effect of watching news footage: For all the vicarious zing and cocktail-party-trivia delivered, the humans on screen remain unknowable.
With skillful direction and editing, Affleck ratchets up the tension. The terrifying sequence of being questioned by the Revolutionary Guard at the airport? The breathless chase of their plane by Iranian military men on the tarmac? Never happened. None of it.
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