Well, Ben Affleck continues to prove that he is most definitely better as a director than as an actor. To be fair, he is three for three for me now. And he's not bad as an actor for sure, but even in his own movie he is probably the weakest link. I'm not sure how closely he worked with the casting director (I am assuming a lot) but one thing he has an eye for is filling this movie with amazing actors and character actors, including people we haven't seen in a long time, from Kyle Chandler and Bryan Cranston to Phillip Baker Hall to John Goodman, Alan Arkin, and Clea Duvall and relative newcomer Scoot McNairy as one of the hostages who has a great arc. Simply put: this is just really great entertainment that turns into a suspenseful white knuckler in the last part of it. The thing that makes it really successful is Affleck is able to keep it suspenseful even though the ending is a foregone conclusion, it's in the public record we can all look it up, but it's still suspenseful, which I think is a good trick. Because if it wasn't it would just be boring, and it never was.
Also, until the nineties when this story was declassified the Canadians, who did play a big part, got ALL the credit for this operation. This isn't important to what I think of the movie but thinking of Canada will ALWAYS make me think of this:
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