Movie Review: Argo and Seven Psychopaths

One is about the production of a fake film used as a ruse to save six Americans trapped in Iran during the Iran hostage crisis in '79 and '80. The other is a film about a film that is being written as the film is unfolding right in front of us. Both are about the idea that anything can happen, no matter how outlandish and impossible that anything may seem to be.

In "Argo," CIA employee Ben Affleck is charged with finding a way to extract six Americans who escaped the overrun American Embassy in Tehran and are hiding out in the home of the Canadian Ambassador. Several implausible plans are suggested, including having them ride bicyles three hundred miles to the Turkish border in the winter. Affleck comes up with a better implausible idea: pretend they are members of a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a Star Wars ripoff. Involve real Hollywood veterans like special effects artist John Goodman and producer Alan Arkin, set up a fake studio to make a fake movies actors and script included, and convince the Revolutionary Guard this is legit. Ridiculous, right? Wrong. This is exactly what happened, although Affleck adds levels of tension and drama apparently not part of the real experience. That's OK. It makes for a great thriller, complemented by the irreverent and jaded humor of Goodman and Arkin. There's a wonderful pun on the title that includes an expletive and an imperative that both actors deliver with relish throughout the film. It represents yet another impossibility, but reinforces the idea, which is why we love movies, that anything is possible.

In "Seven Psychopaths," screenwriter Colin Farrell and his actor friend Sam Rockwell are collaborating on a script about pyschopathic killers (one of whom is played by American music icon, Tom Waits: worth the price of admission when you realize he's in the same movie as Christopher Walken). As the film frames the stories of the imaginary psychopaths, real psychopaths are on the loose, including the mysterious Jack of Diamonds and a vicious hood played by Woody Harrelson, whose shih tzu, Bonny, has been kidnapped by Christopher Walken and Rockwell, who kidnap dogs and then innocently return them when rewards are posted. In an homage to Tarrantino and slasher movies, buckets of blood ooze and splatter from beginning to end and both the "real" world and the "imaginary" world of the script mix in the end. Yes, anything is possible.

Anyone who has lived long enough can look back over the circumstances of his or her life and point to any number of circumstances and unexpected twists and turns that, in retrospect, changed everything. One's own life can seem like an impossible fiction written by a overly imaginative novelist or screenwriter. Try writing your own script and selling it to Hollywood. If you're lucky, it'll be as entertaining and implausible as "Argo" and "Seven Psychopaths." You might even get to meet Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin during the production of your life story.