Commercially and significantly critically successful on release, it won 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing as well as was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Alan Arkin, Best Music (Original Score), Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing.

Critical reviews for the film are largely positive, with major praise for Ben Affleck’s direction, the cast (especially Alan Arkin and John Goodman), the script and the editing, with Stephen Holden of The New York Times writing that “Ben Affleck’s seamless direction catapults him to the forefront of Hollywood filmmakers turning out thoughtful entertainment” while The Washington Times said that it felt “like a movie from an earlier era – less frenetic, less showy, more focused on narrative than sensation” and Roger Ebert gave the film 4/4 stars and called it “spellbinding” and “surprisingly funny”, choosing it as the best film of the year - the last film he would choose for this honour before his death in 2013.

Today, it stands on Rotten Tomatoes at 96% while its critical consensus reads as: “Tense, exciting and often darkly comic, Argo recreates a historical event with vivid attention to detail and finely wrought characters.”