The Argo incident, declassified by Bill Clinton in 1996, actually happened once upon a long while ago: Nov 4, 1979 to be exact. Six people — the US embassy officials — find themselves trapped in the Canadian ambassador’s house when Ayatolla Khomeni’s revolution struck out Mohammad Musadiq’s regime.

Trapped without an exit strategy, the CIA brings in Anthony J. Mendez (Affleck), who concocts a hair-brained scheme thanks to a late-night run of Battle of the Planet of the Apes: he’s going to go Hollywood, and fish the team away. Mendez brings in his old colleague, John Chambers (a breezy John Goodman), who brings in an old-timer Hollywood producer, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin). Together they option a Star Wars rip-off script titled Argo. The officials trapped in Iran would play the lead crew and Mendez would simply fly in guised as an associate producer, brief them up, and fly them back home.

Real life, it seems, is a tad uncomplicated than Hollywood in Argo’s case. By the climax, which includes a Hollywood-ized chase across Meherabad Airport’s runway, Argo becomes a parody of the industry it’s representing and as Affleck’s directorial pinnacle the film knows it ground beforehand. Hollywood may look silly, with its weird make-up and hollowed dreams of shimmering stardom, but sometimes a film may just get the job done.

Released by Warner Bros., Argo is rated R for intermittent revolutionary hullabaloo. It is produced by George Clooney, Ben Affleck and Grant Heslov, and written by Chis Terrio (based on the book The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine article The Great Escape by Joshuah Bearman). — MKJ