Film Scene: Under the radar

Ben Affleck's film about the Iran hostage saga is a solid-gold winner

Argo *****

Ben Affleck's Argo has won Best Film and Best Director at the Golden Globe Awards and, with seven Oscar nominations, is one of this year's "must-see" movies.

It is a most interesting and entertaining collaboration of historical fact and Hollywood fiction. The story plays out in 1980 but prior to that there is an interesting historical prologue.

President Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977 and inherited a unique relationship with the Shah of Iran, who had been returned to his throne by US-British covert action.

The Shah was really just a puppet ruler, allowing the US to take on the role of protecting American interests in the Persian Gulf.

When the Shah's reign was overthrown in 1979, the US and Europe got their first exposure to radical, fundamentalist, political Islam, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Inevitably, the American embassy in Tehran became a major target. A few Americans managed to slip out and take refuge in the still-operating Canadian embassy and thus began a siege that lasted more than a year.

At the centre of it all was CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck). His Washington colleagues were at a loss to figure out how to rescue the American hostages. To march in with uniforms, guns and bombs would only escalate the situation into all-out war.

But, as one character in the film says, "If you want to sell a lie, you have to get the press to sell it for you" - and that's the film's unique extra twist: the production of a fictitious Hollywood sci-fi movie that would be filmed in Iran.

Agent Mendez approached various movie professionals to create a sci-fi adventure script that was planned to be shot in the desert just beyond Tehran. They created posters and staged a publicity launch with real actors, all dressed in costume and sitting around a table reading their roles from the script.

They did everything a film needs to do for the American press. Mendez hired a Hollywood producer, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and Johnny Chambers (John Goodman), an Oscar-winning make-up artist, did the sci-fi masks.

It was a crazy situation. A small group of people knew the film was a scam, but the Hollywood press spread the word about this new sci-fi thriller, and the stories were published in influential showbiz newspapers like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

So when the film crew arrived in Tehran they were greeted cordially and were able to move easily though the streets, supposedly looking for the right locations.

Eventually they got to the embassy, where the make-up artist transformed the hostages to look like the characters in the film. After that, their perilous trip to freedom begins, but where will it end?

As the film ends we learn how Carter presented Mendez with a medal, but what happens to that medal is fascinating.

So, instead of jumping up and walking out while the credits are still rolling, stay to watch the faces of the real hostages and the actors who played those hostages.

That's when you really grasp the skill and the intelligence of all involved. Whether it gets its Oscars or not, Argo is a solid-gold winner.

Wreck it Ralph ****

Writer and director Rich Moore is an Oscar nominee for this film and it is fully deserved. Though set in the present, the movie looks back to those 1980s video game arcades, where the kids played Pac-Manand Space Invaders.

The premise is that when the kids are all gone and the arcade is locked up, the characters from the games come out to relax after racing about and exploding all day. One is Ralph (voiced by John C Reilly), who spends his life breaking things.

He's somewhat shunned by the other characters but worse than that, his game is no longer a favourite and Ralph is dumped into the Sugar Rush, a kart-racing game.

That's where he meets Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) a sparky speedster with a pony-tail who plans to enter a hectic race around the Diet Cola Mountain. Dazzling animation, a clever plot and faster than a roller-coaster, the film is fresh, new and ingenious.

Lawless ***

This moody drama plays out in Virginia in the 1930s, the last years of Prohibition. The three Bondurant brothers, Howard (Jason Clarke), Forrest (Tom Hardy, pictured) and Jack (Shia LaBeouf), have been running their own booze business for years.

Two strangers arrive in town, bringing big changes: Maggie (Jessica Chastain), an ex-prostitute trying to turn over a new leaf, and Rakes (Guy Pearce), a special deputy. He leads a team of brutal cops who intend to close down the moonshine business.

The film's real problem is the uneasy focus of the story. It is neither a full-on western nor a focused cop-drama or a love story and the three plot-strands don't mesh cleanly. But the production values are superb, the costumes are exact and the detail is authentic.