“The Impossible”

4.5 stars

Starring: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin, Ploy Jindachote, Johan Sundberg

Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, horrific mass injury and brief nudity

A horrific natural disaster is seen through the eyes of a desperate family

By Derrick Bang
Enterprise film critic

Félix Bergés and Pau Costa have been deservedly lauded for their special effects; the replicated tsunami — which killed more than 230,000 people in 14 countries, on Dec. 26, 2004 — is completely terrifying, as depicted here on the screen.

But these images, although breathtaking and grim, aren’t the strongest element of director Juan Antonio Bayona’s film. That honor belongs to Oriol Tarragó and Marc Bech, who designed and edited the chilling sound effects. Indeed, that’s how “The Impossible” opens: on a black and silent screen, with a rising, gurgly sort of rumble that intensifies until we scarcely can stand it, wondering precisely what the sound signifies.

We imagine the worst, our minds racing in ghastly directions, this directorial choice far more powerfully placing us “in the moment” than what might be shown.

Then we nearly jump out of our seats as a passenger jet screams into the suddenly illuminated frame, taking our protagonists to what they expect will be an idyllic Christmas holiday in Thailand.

This won’t be the last time Bayona unsettles us with his imaginative application of sound and sound effects. He plays us masterfully, utilizing every element at hand: visual, aural and psychological. The result is impressive, if arduous: often quite difficult to watch.

Sergio G. Sánchez’s screenplay is based on the events as experienced by María Belón, Quique Alvarez and their three sons: Lucas, Tomas and Simon. They’re played here, respectively, by Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor (renamed Henry), Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast. The actual family is Spanish; the script’s one major deviation from fact is to re-cast them as British.

This isn’t merely a concession to box-office popularity, Watts and McGregor undoubtedly being perceived as a draw. This cinematic family’s pale skin and clearly privileged manner — Henry’s high-level job in Japan allowing the luxury of their global travel — more visibly shorthands the cultural divide, once tragedy strikes.

Dozens of moments in this film will build a lump in the throat — indeed, after a time, the emotional intensity never diminishes — but the simple, unexpected gestures of kindness, often across language barriers, are the most powerful. A door, ripped from its hinges and used as a makeshift stretcher. A cell phone. A child’s shy smile, and gentle stroking of a friendly arm.

Devastating.

The story begins peacefully, even idyllically, as Maria, Henry and their three sons arrive at the lush Orchid Resort. These characters are sketched quickly — but vividly — in these early scenes: Henry the loving husband and father, perhaps concerned about the stability of his job; Maria a doctor who has put her practice on hold, to raise her family.

Lucas has reached the mildly rebellious age where stirrings of independence prompt him to lose patience with his two younger brothers. Middle son Thomas, unusually timid, is fascinated by stars and constellations. Five-year-old Simon is cheerful and untroubled, still too young to believe the world is anything but a happy, magical place.

Christmas comes and goes; Boxing Day arrives equally untroubled. The family joins other tourists in the resort pool. Henry, Thomas and Simon tussle in the water; Lucas crosses the deck to retrieve a large plastic ball; Maria chases a loose page from the book she’s reading, finally snatching it while crouched in front of a plate-glass barrier. (Oh God, we think.)

Birds shriek overhead, flying away from … something. The low roar that has been at the edge of everybody’s awareness — ours included — builds. Lucas pauses, and Bayona trusts young Holland’s tense pose and stunned expression to convey the horror of this suddenly approaching wall of water.

Then, chaos.

Maria eventually surfaces, battling for sunlight while countless other people, knocked senseless after being hurled into hard objects, silently drown. She spots Lucas, similarly struggling; they fight implacable currents while trying to reach each other. Fingers clutch, part, clutch again.

This lengthy second act is devoted to Maria and Lucas, as the boy takes charge after realizing the severity of his mother’s injuries. The first shattering moment comes as they reach the (possible) safety of shallow water, and Lucas recoils from his mother’s bared and gashed breast. Holland’s face is a powerful blend of anguish and embarrassment, as he says, barely audibly, “Mum … I can’t see you like that.” (She doesn’t yet know about the gaping tear on the back of her right leg.)

Watts, in turn, continues the moment: Despite the pain building by the second, now that panic is subsiding, Maria grimly tries to cover herself, instinctively understanding that her son needs the assurance of propriety, if he’s to hold it together. Lucas, in turn, quickly realizes that he dare not cry; if he does, his mother will lose her fragile hold on self-control.

Watts’ Academy Award nomination is a given; rarely has an actress been to hell and back so many times, and so persuasively. Her hold on life itself seems to slip away, as Maria’s wounds take their toll. I’m deeply disappointed, though, that young Holland hasn’t been similarly acknowledged. He charts an impressive emotional course as this saga progresses, his manner and actions never less than absolutely authentic.

Holland’s Lucas becomes our surrogate, the boy rising to various challenges in the manner we’d hope to possess. I’m reminded of young Ross Harris in 1983’s “Testament,” as the resolute boy who bicycles throughout his fallout-infected town, serving as a de facto messenger for friends and neighbors.

Holland has a similarly poignant scene when the action shifts to the Takua Pa hospital, with lone survivors wondering whether family members might be alive elsewhere in this huge, now largely makeshift facility. He initially promises to help one man, and soon Lucas is trolling the corridors, calling off names from an ever-expanding list.

Bayona, torturing us anew, juxtaposes elation with heartbreak.

Coincidence, trauma and misidentification — in great part due to the language barrier — build to a point that’s impossible to bear. Bayona is quite adept at such emotional manipulation, having profoundly disturbed us with 2007’s chiller, “The Orphanage.” “The Impossible” is a different sort of horror film, with moments, images and emotions so raw that they’re capable of leaving mental scars.

Watts and Holland get the lion’s share of screen time, but the acting throughout is sensational. Joslin’s Thomas visibly struggles to overcome his own terror when put in charge of Simon; the transition is poignant beyond words. Pendergast’s tiny face, in turn, turns painfully desperate when circumstances prevent Simon from going to the bathroom: a remnant of civilized behavior the little boy can’t bear to part with.

Óscar Faura’s cinematography is superb, initially conveying this land’s delicate beauty, and then — in the aftermath — the oppressive, fetid, heat-drenched devastation. Editors Elena Ruiz and Bernat Vilaplana deserve considerable credit for both pacing and intensity. Bayona similarly understands when to bring the camera in for a close-up, and when to pull back, to convey the utter helplessness of frail human beings beset by Nature at her worst.

“The Impossible” is profoundly hard to endure at times, and yet it’s also profound in a spiritual sense: a testament to human resilience and compassion, and the willingness of total strangers to pull together, in a crisis, for the collective greater good.

Frankly, it’s refreshing to see such a positive, uplifting depiction of people as selfless citizens of the world.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at http://derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com

4.5 stars

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini

Rating: R, for considerable violence, torture and profanity

Strong acting highlights this fact-based account of the CIA’s search for Osama bin Laden

By Derrick Bang
Enterprise film critic

Osama bin Laden was executed on May 2, 2011. Given the realities of Hollywood development time, production and post-production work, this film’s arrival in the waning days of 2012 is nothing short of remarkable.

That the result is this riveting, is icing on the cake.

It’s easy to understand why director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal would select this project as a follow-up to their Oscar-laden triumph with 2008’s “The Hurt Locker.” Although lacking that film’s nail-biting intensity, “Zero Dark Thirty” carries the same suspenseful atmosphere of docu-drama verisimilitude. Given the topic, American audiences also can’t help experiencing more than a little cathartic exhilaration.

Despite the perception that fact-based, politics-laden procedural thrillers are box-office poison, we’ve recently been gifted with two crackling efforts: this one and “Argo.” Both manage the impressive feat of generating tension and building to exciting climaxes, despite our knowing the respective stories’ outcomes long before entering the theater.

That’s no small thing. Scripter William Goldman’s handling of 1976’s “All the President’s Men” remains the superlative template for depicting dull-as-dirt research work in a manner that becomes not just fascinating, but downright compelling; Boal obviously took its lessons to heart. “Zero Dark Thirty” spends a great deal of time watching a lone CIA analyst beat her head against a vague investigative wall, yet these efforts never seem dull or repetitive.

In part, that’s because we know the stakes involved from recent history, and we’re genuinely curious to learn more about what went into this impressively successful covert operation: how the key pieces of information were determined and then properly analyzed. And if Boal takes some dramatic license along the way, well, that’s fine; cinema places its own unique requirements on narrative flow, not the least of which is building our emotional involvement with these characters.

Which brings us to the best weapon in Bigelow’s capable filmmaking arsenal: star Jessica Chastain. As the CIA analyst in question, she drives this story with — by turns — calm intelligence and righteous fury. She’s never less than wholly persuasive, whether cycling grimly through surveillance footage or standing up to overly cautious superiors too concerned about their political reputations.

The story begins in the aftermath of 9/11, as Chastain’s Maya, a CIA analyst and “targeter,” arrives in Pakistan on assignment from D.C. She joins Dan (Jason Clarke), a CIA interrogator trying to extract worthwhile information — by any means necessary — from a hostile detainee (Reda Kateb, as Ammar, in a harrowing, soul-snuffing performance).

The depth of Chastain’s performance emerges immediately here: Although clearly not wishing to be present — Maya’s face actually turns grey — she dare not display weakness in front of her new colleague. At the same time, she’s intrigued, in a clinical way, by what is taking place, and whether such torture is likely to produce useful results.

Maya’s strength lies in psychological evaluation; it’s the primary reason she was sent from the States. It’s therefore telling that when Ammar finally does open up, it’s through guile, rather than physical humiliation. Score one for Maya.

She needs the credibility, having joined a cluster of somewhat condescending agents under the command of Islamabad Station Chief Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler). They’ve been at this for a while; they think they know how to distinguish good information from outright lies. Maya immediately gets into a subtle pissing match with Jessica (Jennifer Ehle), who represents the CIA’s “old school,” Cold War-based methods of seeking leads.

Maya soon hones in on a name: Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, identified as some sort of al-Qaeda message courier. Over time, this shadowy individual is cited by several detainees, but the context varies: People claim to know him but never have seen him; he’s a “disappeared person” or even dead and buried. But Maya senses something significant.

Not that anybody believes her.

Years pass; little — if any — progress is made. Other successful terrorist attacks take place in London and at the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, where — conveniently, for the purposes of this story — Maya and Jessica have met for a drink. The personal danger becomes too great; Maya is shipped back to Langley, where she now reports directly to George (Mark Strong), head of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Divisions of the CIA Counter Terrorism Center.

But she has left a surveillance operation behind, having persuaded Islamabad colleagues that — maybe, perhaps — there really is something to the Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti lead.

By this point, Chastain’s Maya has become a figure of dour, angry determination, no longer able to endure the condescending “wait and see” stonewalling of colleagues and superiors who lack her conviction. We’ve already seen her uncork one helluva tantrum with Bradley, back in Islamabad; now in Langley, in the closest we get to a genuinely amusing running gag, she furiously notates the days passed, with no activity, in red marker pen on George’s office window.

Production designer Jeremy Hindle deserves considerable credit for this film’s aura of authenticity, from the ambitious Abbottabad compound to the cramped corner desk where Maya does most of her initial work in Islamabad. Alexandre Desplat contributes a minimalist score that most often works subconsciously, as a means to increase anxiety, and then builds to throbbing intensity during the nighttime SEAL raid. (“Zero Dark Thirty,” in passing, is military jargon for the dark of night, and also the moment — 12:30 a.m. — when the SEALS first set foot in the compound.)

Boal and Bigelow worked rigorously to adhere, as much as possible, to established fact (and whatever classified information Boal reportedly obtained during chats with undisclosed CIA contacts). Maya’s character is based on an actual CIA analyst; the same is true of Jessica’s character. Joseph Bradley’s “outing” by elements of the Pakistani spy agency ISI references the December 2010 criminal complaint filed against a supposed American CIA section chief identified as Jonathan Banks, in connection with a U.S. drone attack that killed innocent civilians. At all times, in every respect, these events look, sound and feel authentic.

Which brings us to the sticky matter of the “enhanced interrogation” session that opens this film. This rising controversy, involving much beating of chests and high-level denials, threatens to overshadow the great work that Bigelow and her team have wrought … which is just plain silly.

First, and most crucially, who can really say? The folks possibly involved in such activity sure as hell won’t talk. Only a naïve fool would imagine that such lengths haven’t been taken, in the pursuit of information under extreme circumstances. Blaming a movie for supposedly “sullying” American ideals is no more than cheap political theater.

Second, it is a movie. However accurate the extensive underpinnings, we’re dealing with drama here … not a documentary. Chris Terrio’s screenplay for “Argo” takes huge liberties with the third-act escape sequence, which wasn’t anywhere near that suspenseful in real life, but I don’t see Ben Affleck getting raked over the coals for this “betrayal of truth.”

At the end of the day, we should judge “Zero Dark Thirty” solely on its ability to entertain, enlighten and hold our attention. And in those respects, it’s quite impressive.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at http://derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com

Enterprise film critic

“The Sessions”

Five stars

Starring: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Adam Arkin, Annika Marks, Rhea Perlman

Rating: R, for strong sexuality, graphic nudity and sexual candor

Most notably, O’Brien was an inspirational figure in the blossoming late-20th century movement to encourage disabled people to lead independent lives. He contracted polio at the age of 6; the disease left him paralyzed from the neck down, and able to control only three muscles: one in his right foot, one in his neck and one in his jaw. He spent most of his adult life in an iron lung, able to “escape” only for brief intervals.

He initially dictated his works to attendants, then typed them with a mouth stick.

Born in Boston and raised in Sacramento, O’Brien moved to Berkeley in 1978, when he was accepted as a freshman at UC Berkeley. He graduated in 1982, then — after initially being turned down — was admitted to Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. By then, he was a familiar fixture in Berkeley, charging about the streets in a Stanford-built electric gurney that he controlled — badly — with his left foot. Because of the way his spine had been curved by polio, he never was able to sit up in a conventional wheelchair.

Writer/director Ben Lewin’s remarkable film, “The Sessions,” opens with some vintage KPIX Channel 5 “Eyewitness News” footage of O’Brien, as he navigates city streets and the UC Berkeley campus. The editing is coy; we’re never quite able to see O’Brien’s face, and as a result there’s no disconnect when this dramatized story opens in his apartment, as a cat enters an open window one bright, sunny morning and uses its tail to tickle Mark’s face into wakefulness, his body cocooned by the iron lung.

Of course, Mark can’t scratch the resulting itch. The moment is both mildly tragic and unexpectedly amusing, the latter in great part because of the passion actor John Hawkes puts into Mark’s effort to “will” the itch away.

Hawkes’ bravura performance is but one of this film’s many miracles. Another is the frequent application of humor: so carefully, perfectly modulated by Lewin. Polio, iron lungs and a wasted body aren’t humorous, and being encouraged to laugh at Mark would be reprehensible. But that never happens; Mark’s savvy, self-deprecating observations are wry, revealing and almost frighteningly intimate.

“The Sessions” is based on an article — “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” — that O’Brien wrote for the May 1990 issue of The Sun of North Carolina. It’s readily available online, and you’ll no doubt be motivated to seek it out … but do watch this film first. Better, then, to marvel at the skill with which Lewin has adapted the material, and remained artistically and (mostly) factually faithful to O’Brien’s disarmingly candid analysis and description of his sexual hang-ups and physical limitations.

Catholicism was an important part of Mark’s life, and his frightened decision to lose his virginity — which is where Lewin’s film opens — necessitates often embarrassing conversations with a local priest, Father Brendan (William H. Macy). These intimate chats — taking place in the aisle, since Mark can’t maneuver into a confessional — are another of this film’s miracles: precisely modulated, breathtakingly honest (and fascinating!) efforts by one frightened man to reach out to somebody who could have judged him mercilessly, but instead becomes a friend.

Macy, his long, shaggy hair reflecting the 1980s Berkeley setting, is marvelous in this role (a part expanded from the “Father Mike” mentioned in O’Brien’s article). Although professing to have “heard it all,” Father Brendan clearly is operating outside his comfort zone; we see the agonized indecision in Macy’s face, even as Mark cannot.

There comes a point when Father Brendan becomes more a friend, less a priest; it’s hard to isolate the moment, but we eventually recognize the transition. And we cannot help but smile when Macy sighs, glances about his church and falls back on Jesus’ kindness and mercy, rather than strict Catholic views of sex outside marriage.

Mark finds his way to a sex surrogate — these days, labeled a surrogate partner — in the form of Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt), a comfortably married woman with a teenage son and tolerant husband (Adam Arkin). She walks and talks like a therapist, until the first session progresses to the removal of clothing.

What follows next is breathtaking: not in the sense of being something magnificent, but rather because of the levels of anxiety and invasive intimacy Lewin builds into the scene, as conveyed fearlessly by Hawkes and Hunt. This delicate encounter has all the informal authenticity that Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones, despite their considerable acting chops, were unable to bring to “Hope Springs.”

Hawkes will be remembered for his two recent psycho roles, in “Winter’s Bone” and “Martha Marcy May Marlene”; the former brought him a well-deserved Academy Award nomination. He’s not a showy actor, but he nonetheless burrows deeply into a character and allows identifiable traits to seep out, like perspiration on a hot day. His Uncle Teardrop, in “Winter’s Bone,” was seriously scary; his take on O’Brien, here, is credibly vulnerable, anxiety-laden and disarmingly candid. We can’t help but adore him.

Hunt bares everything here, body and soul, leaving utterly nothing to the imagination; in a very real sense, we experience the same compassionate frankness that Cheryl grants Mark.

It’s the most precious and valuable gift that she could bestow, because Mark has spent his entire life in a heightened state of humiliated sexual repression. As he himself wrote, in the Sun article, “Sexuality seemed to be utterly without purpose in my life, except to mortify me when I became aroused during bed baths.”

Yes, Lewin’s approach is unflinchingly frank. Prudes are advised to steer clear, and — rest assured — this absolutely isn’t a film for children.

Lewin lifts many incidents and even interior monologues from the Sun article, and from Mark’s poetry, allowing us — as often as possible — the benefit of his innermost thoughts. No doubt this comes from Lewin’s own experience; he is, himself, a polio survivor. Seeking as much authenticity as possible, Lewin worked closely with the actual Cheryl Cohen Greene, and also with Susan Fernbach, whom we meet late in this film.

This actually is the second film about O’Brien; he also was the subject of Jessica Yu’s Academy Award-winning 1997 documentary, “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien.” Yu’s film also can be found online, and you’ll want to watch it.

Films like “The Sessions” require handling as delicate as that afforded Mark by Cheryl; getting warm bodies into the theater is the battle, because you can’t help being entranced once Mark’s story begins. This is a powerful, special and richly memorable experience … and the sort of film we’ll simply never see from a conventional Hollywood studio.

Thank God for indies, and for the faith of this entire production crew, which made this film for — better sit down — an amazingly modest $1 million.

We need more like it.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com

“Argo”

4.5 stars

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall

Rating: R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

The events depicted in “Argo” wouldn’t be believed in a novel; the wild ’n’ crazy premise defies credibility. And yet this bizarre CIA mission actually took place during the Iranian hostage crisis; indeed, it was a rare burst of sunlight during the 444 grim days that Islamist students and militants held 52 captives in Tehran’s American Embassy.

“Argo” can be placed alongside 1995’s “Apollo 13,” as a thoroughly engrossing drama that loses none of its tension despite our knowing the outcome. Chris Terrio’s script blends established fact with third-act dramatic license and some unexpectedly droll dialogue; yes, it’s possible to derive humor from these life-and-death events.

The package is assembled with directorial snap by Ben Affleck, who also grants himself the plum role of Antonio “Tony” Mendez, the CIA “exfil” (exfiltration) specialist charged with a real-life impossible mission. Affleck — as director — capably introduces the key players and sets up the plot elements, slides into a scheme as audacious as any caper thriller ever concocted by Hollywood, and then tightens the screws until the tension is unbearable.

The film opens with a prologue, depicted in movie-style storyboards, that outlines the post-WWII American “meddling” that restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in Iran in 1953. Although a well-protected monarch for the next quarter-century, the shah was recognized in his own country as little more than an American puppet; he eventually was deposed in February 1979 by a revolution that led to the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The fractured relationship between the United States and Iran worsened as that year progressed, then splintered entirely when the despised shah — ill with cancer — was admitted to the United States for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Two weeks later, on Nov. 4, an enraged mob broke through the American Embassy gates, stormed the building and orchestrated the stand-off that kept us — and much of the world — glued to news channels for the next 14 months.

Affleck begins his film at this point, and the powder-keg build-up to the embassy storming is deeply unsettling. The American efforts at damage control — and document destruction — are akin to spitting in the wind. Then comes the detail often forgotten when we recall these ghastly events: Although the aforementioned 52 Americans are captured quickly, six others manage to slip away in the confusion; they’re given shelter — and concealment — in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber).

The situation is precarious: The Iranians soon realize that the six embassy people are missing, although their identities remain unknown … for the moment.

Back in the States, Mendez is summoned by Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), the assistant deputy director of the CIA. Mendez watches as various analysts, having been made aware of the six stranded Americans, blue-sky some truly ludicrous rescue suggestions, each one dumber than the last. (You gotta love the plan to bicycle out of Iran.)

Then Mendez uncorks something even more audacious.

“You don’t have a better bad idea than this?” he’s incredulously asked.

“This is the best bad idea we have,” Mendez replies. “By far.”

Affleck gives that line just the right reading. It’s funny … but our laughter is strained, because we recognize the need for desperate measures.

Mendez understands a core truth: Everybody bends over backwards for a film crew on a location shoot, even during times of political crisis. Mendez also has an ace up his sleeve: an association with John Chambers, a veteran Hollywood makeup specialist who won an honorary Academy Award in 1968, for his work on “Planet of the Apes,” and also exercised his extensive talents on television’s original “Star Trek.”

On the side, unknown to his Tinseltown friends, Chambers also applied his skills to governmental intelligence operations.

Chambers is played, with oversized verve, by John Goodman. It’s a plum role to begin with, and Terrio feeds the actor plenty of deliciously snarky dialogue. Indeed, Goodman would run away with the film, were it not for the third key player in what becomes a fascinating Hollywood charade: Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a legendary movie mogul brought in to legitimize the plan.

Arkin and Goodman may be the best Mutt ’n’ Jeff tag team ever caught on camera; they’re simply hilarious together, even as events in Iran escalate from tense to nail-biting.

Siegel is Terrio’s one fabrication: a composite character drawn from various movie colony types. Although Siegel is considered past his sell-by date, he’s no less feisty and committed to the power of The Big Lie. And the scheme is heaven-sent to such a colorful, blustery individual: Siegel’s last big hurrah will be a film that doesn’t really exist … but could save six lives.

Because that’s what “Argo” is: a wholly fabricated Studio Six science-fiction spectacular and “cosmic conflagration,” set on a distant, arid planet, which blends the then-ubiquitous formula of spaceships, aliens, action and stalwart young heroes rescuing otherworldly maidens. If this wholly fictitious production can be granted the imprimatur of authenticity, then Mendez can fly into Iran — as a Studio Six co-producer — and return with the six members of his Canadian location-scouting film crew.

Simply, utterly mad.

Affleck (as director) and editor William Goldenberg smoothly cut between simultaneous events: the Hollywood efforts to raise awareness of “Argo” and Studio Six; the fraying nerves of the six Americans who dare not be seen outside Ambassador Taylor’s home; and the massive Iranian effort to piece together shredded documents, in order to identify those same six people.

Since Mendez initially is surrounded by such flamboyant actors — Cranston’s O’Donnell is just as richly theatrical as Arkin and Goodman — Affleck wisely modulates his performance in the other direction. His take on Mendez is cool and collected: a patch of calm in an otherwise turbulent ocean. It’s a crucial reading, because it lends conviction to Mendez’s insistence — when he eventually outlines this crazy scheme to the six dubious Americans — that yes, he can pull this off.

Affleck and Terrio build to a stunner of a third act, and here the split-second timing begins to feel a bit Hollywood-esque. But you’re unlikely to care; when the overall package is this accomplished, it’s easy to forgive minor detours from the path of absolute truth.

In five short years, and over the course of three films — starting with “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Town” — Affleck has demonstrated increasingly skilled directorial chops. “Argo” is the sort of industry-themed project that inevitably draws Oscar attention; that would be another well-deserved feather in the cap of the talented writer/director/producer/actor who first hit our radar when he shared an Academy Award for scripting “Good Will Hunting.”

Frankly, I can’t wait to see what Affleck does next.

— Read more of Derrick Bang’s film criticism at derrickbang.blogspot.com. Comment on this review at www.davisenterprise.com