This is probably one of the most watchable of the Best Picture noms. That probably means it doesn't have a shot in hell of winning.Based on a true story, the movie is about the CIA-led extraction of 6 Americans from Iran during the 1979 Hostage Crisis. As the embassy was being taken over, six workers fled out the back door and hid in the Canadian ambassador's (Victor Garber) house. Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) is called upon to find a way to extract them before they are found and killed. After watching a movie with his son, Mendez comes up with the idea to fly to Iran and take the Americans out by pretending they're a Canadian film crew on a location shot. He recruits the assistance of a make-up specialist (John Goodman) and a producer (Alan Arkin) to help him fake the existence of a movie. Since that's 90% of Hollywood anyway, they jump at the chance.
This is definitely one of the most quotable of the nominees and, overall, I think it's a very good movie. Alan Arkin is a scene-stealer and it's nice to see Affleck being a little more subdued. I don't really know anything about the technical process of editing or mixing film and sound but I did very much like the intercuts of real news footage from the period and the attention paid to finding people who resembled their real-life counterparts. The score was pretty and unobstrusive, which I'm pretty sure is what it should be.
As a side note, I've been trying to work my way through the second season of Alias and I couldn't help but wish Jennifer Gardner had made a cameo considering that her fake dad was the ambassador and her real husband was the director of a movie about a CIA agent.
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