operative Tony Mendez and the 2007 Wired article "The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran"[4] written by Joshuah Bearman and edited by Nicholas Thompson.

The film, which also has Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman in supporting roles, was released in the United States on October 12, 2012.

Argo received widespread critical acclaim for the acting (particularly Arkin and Goodman's), Affleck's direction, Terrio's screenplay, the editing, and Desplat's score.

While on the phone with his son, he is inspired by watching Battle for the Planet of the Apes and begins plans for creating a cover story for the escapees: that they are Canadian filmmakers who are in Iran scouting exotic locations for a science-fiction film.

Together, they set up a phony film production company, publicize their plans, and successfully establish the pretense of developing Argo, a "science fantasy adventure" in the style of Star Wars, to lend the cover story credibility.

He pushes ahead anyway, forcing his boss, Deputy Director Jack O'Donnell, to hastily re-obtain authorization for the mission and rebook their canceled tickets on a Swissair flight.

Tensions rise at the airport, where the escapees' new ticket reservations are confirmed only at the last minute, and the head guard's call to the fake production company in Hollywood is answered only at the last second.

Taylor shuts down the embassy and leaves Iran with his wife while their Iranian housekeeper, who knew about the Americans but lied to the revolutionaries to protect them, escapes to Iraq.

Mendez is awarded the Intelligence Star, but due to the mission's classified nature, he receives the medal secretly and has to return it afterward.

A textual epilogue reveals that the remaining hostages were released after 444 days in captivity; Chambers, who received the Intelligence Medal of Merit, remained friends with Mendez until his death; and Mendez, whose Intelligence Star was returned to him after Bill Clinton declassified the Canadian Caper in 1997, lives with his family in rural Maryland.

Chris Terrio wrote the screenplay based on Joshuah Bearman's 2007 article "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran," which was published in Wired.

[5] Affleck mentioned the influences for the film, which include Costa-Gavras's work, All the President's Men, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and The Battle of Algiers which served as references.

[11] As a historical piece, the film made use of archival news footage from ABC, CBS and NBC; and included popular songs from the era, such as "Little T&A" by The Rolling Stones (an anachronism, as it was not released until the following year), "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits, "Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen and "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin.

The website's consensus reads: "Tense, exciting, and often darkly comic, Argo recreates a historical event with vivid attention to detail and finely wrought characters.

[21] Naming Argo one of the best 11 films of 2012, critic Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: "Ben Affleck's seamless direction catapults him to the forefront of Hollywood filmmakers turning out thoughtful entertainment.

"[22] The Washington Times said it felt "like a movie from an earlier era — less frenetic, less showy, more focused on narrative than sensation," but that the script included "too many characters that he doesn't quite develop.

It is so easy to manufacture a thriller from chases and gunfire, and so very hard to fine-tune it out of exquisite timing and a plot that's so clear to us we wonder why it isn't obvious to the Iranians.

He goes on to describe the film's structure: "(1) the presentation of the scheme to reluctant and unimaginative superiors, (2) the transformation of a ragtag bunch of ne'er-do-wells and wackos into a coherent, coordinated unit and (3) the carrying out of the task.

[26]Abolhassan Banisadr, foreign minister and then president during the incident, argued that the movie does not take into account the fact that most of the cabinet members advocated freeing all the American personnel quickly.

Ghomeshi asserted "among all the rave reviews, virtually no one in the mainstream media has called out [the] unbalanced depiction of an entire ethnic national group, and the broader implications of the portrait."

This opinion was shared by the ceremony's host Seth MacFarlane[36] and Quentin Tarantino, whose film Django Unchained was nominated in several categories.

[37] Entertainment Weekly wrote about this controversy: Standing in the Golden Globe pressroom with his directing trophy, Affleck acknowledged that it was frustrating not to get an Oscar nod when many felt he deserved one.

[40] Maclean's asserted that "the movie rewrites history at Canada's expense, making Hollywood and the CIA the saga's heroic saviours while Taylor is demoted to a kindly concierge.

"[41] The postscript text said that the CIA let Taylor take the credit for political purposes, which some critics thought implied that he did not deserve the accolades he received.

[42] In response to this criticism, Affleck changed the postscript text to read: "The involvement of the CIA complemented efforts of the Canadian embassy to free the six held in Tehran.

"[41]After his death, The Washington Post described Taylor as the "main hero" of the Iran hostage escape, quoting former president Jimmy Carter in doing so.

"[50] On March 12, 2013, the New Zealand House of Representatives censured Affleck by unanimously agreeing to the following motion, initiated by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters: ... this House acknowledge[s] with gratitude the efforts of former New Zealand diplomats Chris Beeby and Richard Sewell in assisting American hostages in Tehran during the hostage crisis in 1979, and express[es] its regret that the director of the movie Argo saw fit to mislead the world about what actually happened during that crisis when, in reality, our courageous diplomats' inspirational actions were of significant help to the American hostages and deserve the factual and historical record to be corrected.