Argo fuck yourself.

And so the Academy clasps another crushingly mediocre and undeserving film to its geriatric bosom. Seriously, you think this is the best film of the year? This entertaining but overwhelmingly cliched thriller is the height of cinematic achievement for 2012? You must be shitting me.

Listen to this. You’re watching a film that’s supposedly based on a true story. Therefore, you invest a certain amount of faith that most of the events depicted on the screen are based on some sort of truth. Of course you’re not naive enough to believe that everything happens as it did in real life. You know that some things have to be changed for dramatic licence. But then you come to the ending.

The end of the film sees a group of American diplomats trying to flee Iran. The authorities are trying to locate them and their lives are in danger. But somehow, under a fake cover, they make their way to the airport. Simultaneously, little Iranian children are putting together shredded pictures of the diplomats so that the authorities can identify the missing Americans.

There’s much sweating of palms as the Americans progress through the different levels of security at the Iranian airport. Will they blow their cover? Will they be captured? WIll they lose that ridiculous facial hair?

There’s an undeniable level of tension in this sequence. Having once had to spend quite a while trying to convince an American border official that it was okay for me to enter the country (apparently I’d been visiting too much!), I know how scary and stressful these situations can be. But certain things in Argo just don’t make sense. For instance, we find out, after the Iranian revolution, that stricter immigration procedures have been put in place. Part of this involves customs forms. When someone enters the country, they fill out a form. A copy is given to the border official and the passenger gets to keep a copy, too. Then when the visitor leaves, the two forms are married together, so that the official knows that the the visitor entered the country legally and that they’ve left.

But the diplomats here never had that form. So when they try to leave the country, handing in a form that Ben Affleck’s character stole when he entered Iran, there’s no copy for the customs officer to marry it to. The officials have a look around but don’t find anything. Eventually, though, they give up and the guy gets his passport stamped. Okay, it’s possible that a form can get lost - clerical error and all. But what about the five other diplomats? Won’t the guy notice something fishy when the next person also doesn’t have a customs form copy filed away out back? Apparently not. Not that we get to see the subsequent exchanges, as suddenly the entire group are through passport control and the matter is neatly swept under the rug.

Things get a lot worse, though. Our group reaches their gate at the airport, only to be pulled out of the line by Iranian soldiers. They’re quickly interrogated. Pulses quicken but then one of the diplomats speaks passionately about his fake cover - they’re in Iran to look for locations to make a movie. He shows storyboards and explains the story and Ben Affleck’s heart soars (and presumably the audience as well) as his protege proves himself to be a fabulous actor. Okay, this is very Hollywood, but so what? It works. So the group is let on the plane....only those little hands have finally put the pictures together and a soldier is running through the airport screaming at the top of his lungs to stop the plane. Meanwhile the diplomats are finally sitting down. We’re safe! But they’re not...because the soldiers are ripping through doors, forcing their way through gates and revving up jeeps to intercept the plane that’s sitting on the tarmac ready to take off. Yeah, this makes more sense than radioing air traffic control! And then as the plane receives clearance to take off, they put their foot on the accelerator and try and catch up. Maybe this little jeep can ram this massive jet off the runway! They get closer and closer and beads of sweat are percolating on our concerned brows. The diplomats have no idea of the drama that’s unfolding on the runway but then Ben Affleck looks out of the window and sees the vehicle. Holy flurking schnit! They’re going to get us! All of my effort and all of my labour was for naught!

But then the plane takes off. For a horrible second I thought fighter jets were going to be deployed and angry, bearded Iranians were going to try and intercept the passenger plane while kissing pictures of the Ayatollah. But thankfully this doesn’t happen and the passengers receive notice that they can finally booze it up. We’re out of Iranian air space! Cue hugs galore and sweeping music!

What a load of fucking bullshit. None of this happened. None of it! Oh, the diplomats did board a plane and they did fly out of Iran but that’s about it. They arrived at the airport early in the morning, went through security without any issues and went home. Why the need then for car chases and screaming soldiers and phoney baloney Hollywood bullshit? What, just because this film is also about Hollywood means that it has to have a ridiculous Hollywood ending? Congratulations everyone, you’ve just sullied a perfectly entertaining political thriller.

And it’s a real shame, because there’s a lot to enjoy about this movie. The performances are good, the direction is tight, it’s funny, it’s tense, it has an amazing opening sequence that expertly explains the situation at the time. It’s pretty much everything you need in a thriller. But then I guess because the real life escape was so routine, they felt the need to jazz it up. Okay, I don’t mind a bit of fluffing. But jeeps chasing jet planes? It’s too much. It’s way too much.

Argo fuck yourself. And fuck the Academy as well! Yay, it’s a film about Hollywood saving American diplomats from angry, bearded foreigners! Let me stick my head up my ass and vote for this self-congratulatory nonsense!

There’s a scene in Glengarry Glen Ross where Shelly ‘the Machine’ Levine (Jack Lemmon) says that a man is his job. And as far as some people go, he’s right. Many men define themselves by the work they do, the money they earn and the car they drive. I mean, who gives a fuck about friends and family or higher aspirations? Or even simple things like happiness? That shit is for dickless deadbeats. The real meaning of life is a high wage and to vanquish your enemies. Everything else is a pointless waste of time.

In the great scene where Blake (Alec Baldwin) gives his ‘motivational speech’, he mocks the notion of a man being a nice person or a good father. Yeah, is that going to pay for your nice suit or your expensive watch? No it’s not. And he says that any man who can’t close a deal should hit the bricks; they should leave. This is pure Darwinism. Do or die. Fuck or be fucked.

In this sort of environment personal lives are next to non-existent (when work is your entire being, what else is there?), but Shelly Levine does attempt to extend beyond these limits. Through a series of phone calls we hear that he has an ill daughter. But to be honest he always sounds like he’s going through the motions – he seems to be checking up on her out of obligation rather than because of any feelings of tenderness. Shelly’s heart is elsewhere. His heart belongs to the sale.

There’s more than one instance when the sale is spoken about or shown to be close to a sexual act, but the best example is probably the scene where Shelly and Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) are discussing a deal Shelly’s closed. He’s been going through a lean phase, unable to sell shit, but suddenly he’s on top of the word, spilling his guts to his pal. And he talks about it like he’s been with a woman. ‘They signed. It was great. It was so fucking great. It was like they wilted all at once.’ And to make the story even more sexual, Levine had been waiting for 22 minutes for his ‘clients’ to sign the deal. 22 minutes that he had to spend in silence waiting for them to sign the contract. In a world of lies and deceit, this is the closest these men can get to intimacy – the signing of a piece of paper has a purity and a joy that even the act of love lacks.

But it’s not just the orgasm of a scratched name that provides satisfaction, there’s also the foreplay. Sometimes it goes horribly wrong like in the excruciating scene when Shelly turns up at someone’s home and faces a brick wall, but sometimes it goes like clockwork. An example of this is when Ricky Roma is talking to James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce). Roma isn’t so much selling as seducing. He whispers soft words into Lingk’s ear and charms the pants off him. Lingk is fooled into thinking that this is a genuine relationship, that there’s sincerity here. And for once he feels like a man. He can step out of his wife’s shadow and show that he has a pair of balls. But unfortunately, later, those balls are cut off and he comes back begging for his money. But he only does it because his wife has told him to get his cheque back. And at the end he goes to the remarkable length of apologising to Ricky. This is how deep the seduction has gone. The broken sale is a betrayal of sacred the link between men.

But even the sacred bond between men is shown to be completely phoney. After all, what’s the next best thing to making lots of money? To see your colleagues or your friends fail miserably. And what’s more infuriating than someone else’s success? Answer: nothing.

Some of the best exchanges in the film occur between Levine and Williamson (Kevin Spacey). They should be pulling for the same team, but they hate each other’s guts. Williamson is a ‘secretary’ (any man who doesn’t have the balls to hit the streets and make some money is a worthless, prissy faggot) and Levine is a washed up has-been with a big mouth. So at the beginning, when he can’t make a sale, Levine is servile and pleading – he even tries to buy leads from Williamson. But once Levine closes a deal, the real Shelly comes out. He taunts Williamson and asks him what he is. He even demands the new Glengarry leads. But then once Levine becomes comfortable, Williamson tells him the bad news that his deal won’t go through, that the people he sold to are insane. It’s an incredibly cruel scene, with some scathing dialogue. ‘Why?’ asks Levine, wanting to know why he wasn’t told earlier (Williamson was aware all along that a deal wouldn’t stick). ‘Because I don’t like you,’ replies Williamson. ‘My daughter?’ ‘Fuck you.’ In this world there are few things better than screwing someone over, to drag them down and pull yourself up.

Another relationship filled with animosity is the one between Roma and Moss (Ed Harris). Moss despises Roma because Roma’s on top of the board. And there’s a lot of dark humour to be had in the argument they have in the office. The dialogue is perfect. But it’s made even better by Pacino’s performance. His delivery of the lines is outstanding. And I also love him in the scene where he berates Williamson for ruining his sale. ‘You stupid fucking cunt, you idiot…You fairy. You company man…Who told you you could work with men?’ The outrage he feels at losing a sale is probably as strong or stronger than the anger he’d feel if a drunk run over a loved one. And his dialogue also highlights the way that nothing is despised more than incompetence. We can tolerate greed and deceit, but incompetence is beyond the pale. There’s no more worthless human being on the planet than a person who can’t do their job properly.

However, there is one seemingly sincere relationship – the one between Roma and Levine. They seem to get along quite amiably. But then again, you get the feeling that these men are two sides of the same coin. You get the feeling that Roma is a reflection of Levine in his youth. How long before things goes south for Roma? How long before his confidence is ruined and he’s reduced to begging for scraps?

And that’s the scary thing about Glengarry Glen Ross. When you’re doing well, great, but if you begin to do badly, you’re fucked. No one wants to know. No one wants to help. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself.

And the ending wonderfully illustrates how lonely this type of existence is. Levine, unknown to Roma, is going to be arrested for robbing the office – at the end, Levine pathetically tries to talk to Roma one last time before being hauled into to speak to a police officer, but Roma is busy on the phone. So Levine’s departure goes unnoticed. And worse than that, Ricky goes off to lunch alone and Levine’s colleagues continue to try and sell. Yes, the world will manage to revolve with Levine behind bars. He, like us, is easily replaced. Therefore if work is what defines us, we have nothing when it’s taken away.