John Goodman, Alan Arkin, and Ben Affleck in ArgoARGO

It sounds like an all-too-Hollywood idea for a high-concept suspense thriller: A sextet of State Department employees are trapped in Iran, and their only hope for escape lies with an ingenious CIA official who plans to free the Americans by having them pose as a location-scouting team for a Canadian science-fiction movie. Yet within its first minutes, director/star Ben Affleck's Argo - based on a recently declassified chapter of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 - registers as terrifically, nerve-rackingly authentic, even if the film's most enjoyable elements are, in truth, as Hollywood as they come.