After winning the Oscar for the best film, Ben Affleck’s Argo has been re-released in India. Those of us who missed watching it the first time around can do so now. As you watch the film, a gripping tale of the CIA mission to rescue six American diplomats from Tehran, the question that comes to mind is: can India pull something like this off? For those of you who have not seen the movie, here is a quick synopsis. When Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionaries capture the US embassy in Tehran shortly after the Islamic Revolution, CIA agent Tony Mendez creates a Hollywood film production to rescue the six American diplomats holed in at the Canadian ambassador’s residence.

Realising that it’s only a matter of time before the six are identified and taken hostage, the US government agrees to a risky proposal by Mendez: posing as a Canadian film producer, he will enter Iran with the excuse of scouting locations for an upcoming science fiction movie, pick the six diplomats, pass them off as film crew at the airport, and fly out of Iran right under the noses of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. After many twists and turns, all’s well that ends well, the Hollywood way.