Argo

Argo

Argo is a 2012 film about a covert mission to extract six US Embassy employees out of Iran in what is now known as the Canadian Caper, in which parts of an unmade film project for Lord of Light which they had renamed Argo, were used as cover by CIA agents.

Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director(s): Ben Affleck
Production: Warner Bros. Pictures
  Won 3 Oscars. Another 94 wins & 152 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.7
Metacritic:
86
Rotten Tomatoes:
96%
R (Restricted)
Year:
2012
120
$136,019,448
Website
3,387 Views
The movie was fake. The mission was real.
They weren’t making a movie, they were making history.
The most important movie of all time ... was never made.
Based on a declassified true story.

[At a CIA briefing]

Jack O'Donnell:
The six of them went out a back exit. Brits turned them away, Kiwis turned them away, Canadians took them in. Traffic calls them the 'Houseguests'; they haven't left the Canadian ambassador's house since it happened.

Tony Mendez:
Why didn't we get them ten weeks ago?

O'Donnell:
Too dangerous. You've got Revolutionary Guards going door to door like Jehovah's Witnesses. Half of them think Khomeini's been too lenient on the ones in the embassy.

Mendez:
What about the White House?

O'Donnell:
Carter's shitting enough bricks to build the pyramids. The Canadians are done; they say they're bearing too much risk. Their foreign secretary corners Vance in Brussels and told him she wants the six of them out.

Mendez:
Who else knows?

O'Donnell:
Just the families. Meanwhile, some genius in our embassy was keeping a mug book on everybody who worked there.

Mendez:
Jesus Christ!

O'Donnell:
We think it got shredded before they got in. But now the bastards are using sweatshop kids to reassemble the shreds, and once they reassemble that book, they'll know six Americans got out and they'll know what they look like. Standing room only for beheadings in the square.

Mendez:
Who's handling?

O'Donnell:
State is coordinating in house.

Mendez:
State? They don't do exfils.

O'Donnell:
They do now. They want to run it by us, strictly as consultants. Engell says its a lose-lose. These people die, they die badly. Publicly. State wants the blame, we'll give it to them.

Mendez:
What does he want me here for?

O'Donnell:
So he can tell State he ran it by his best exfil guy.

[The CIA start talking about extraction options for the six US Embassy employees]

Robert Pender:
What we like for this now are bicycles. We've identified backroads from the Shemiran district - a couple of rat lines through the mountains to the crossing at Tabriz. Cars are off the table because of the roadblocks.

Jon Bates:
We wait until the weather clears up then deliver the six bikes, provide them with maps to the Turkish border.

Adam Engell:
We have intelligence they can ride bicycles or we're prepared to send in somebody to teach them.

Tony Mendez:
Or you could just send in training wheels and meet them at the border with Gatorade. It's 300 miles to the Turkish crossings. They'd need a support crew behind them with a tire pump.

Engell:
We've only been asked to sharpshoot this, State's handling the op.

Pender:
Who is...?

Jack O'Donnell:
Tony's an exfil spesh. He got a lot of the Shah's people out after the fall.

Mendez:
If these people can read or add, pretty soon they're gonna figure out they're six short of a full deck. It's winter. You can't wait around until spring when it's nice enough to take a bike ride. The only way out of that city is the airport. You build them new identities, you send in a Moses, he takes them out on a commercial flight.

Bates:
We've explored those options.

Engell:
They wouldn't clear airport security. Komiteh own the place.

Bates:
They would pose as reporters. The government issued seventy-something visas for American journalists.

Mario Malinov:
Seventy-four. And the Revolutionary Guards keep them on 74 leashes.

Mendez:
If they're caught with fake journalist creds, it's Peter Jennings' head in a noose in an hour.


Share your thoughts on Argo's quotes with the community:

0 Comments

    Quote of the Day Today's Quote | Archive

    Would you like us to send you a FREE inspiring quote delivered to your inbox daily?

    Please enter your email address:

    Citation

    Use the citation below to add this movie page to your bibliography:

    Style:MLAChicagoAPA

    "Argo Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Dec. 2024. <https://www.quotes.net/movies/argo_quotes_13141>.

    Know another quote from Argo?

    Don't let people miss on a great quote from the "Argo" movie - add it here!

    Quiz

    Are you a quotes master?

    »
    Who said, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."?
    A Samuel Johnson
    B Roy Rogers
    C Queen Elizabeth II
    D John Wayne in "The Searchers"