Butler's Cinema Scene

Jon Hamm

“BEIRUT”  My rating: B-

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Beirut” is a decent LeCarresque thriller that doesn’t live up to its advance hype.

It’s O.K. Not great. It features  a solid central performance by Jon Hamm as a boozy former diplomat with a bad case of existential angst, and Moroccan locations that fill in nicely for the war-ravaged city of the title.

But too often this effort from writer Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton,” “The Bourne Legacy,” “Rogue One”) and veteran TV director Brad Anderson feels overly familiar. The plot, characters and situations offer a well-produced retread of material we’ve already seen many times before.

Gilroy’s screenplay begins in Beirut in 1972.  American diplomat Mason Skiles (Hamm) is presiding over a cocktail party in his residence overlooking the city known by many as the Paris of the Mideast.

Civil war is brewing, but Mason has dedicated his diplomatic skills to averting armed conflict among Lebanon’s native Muslims and Christians, not to mention the Palestinian refugees who are flooding the country and the Israeli military presence hovering at the  border.

It says much about Mason’s liberality that he is married to a Lebanese woman and the couple have taken in a teenaged Palestinian refugee named Karim.

In mere minutes, Mason’s world falls apart. CIA thugs show up to snatch Karim, having just discovered that the boy is the younger brother of a known terrorist. At the same time Karim’s sibling shows up to grab the kid. In the ensuing mayhem Mason’s wife is gunned down.

A decade later we find Mason back in the states using his negotiating skills to settle labor disputes. His heart really isn’t in his work, though. He’s a lush with nothing to live for.

Rosamund Pike, Jon Hamm

He’s surprised when CIA types approach him with a job offer.  Back in Beirut an old embassy buddy, Cal (Mark Pellegrino), has been taken hostage.  The kidnapper is none other than Mason’s old ward Karim, who wants to trade Cal for his older brother, missing and believed held by the Israelis who have intervened in Lebanon’s war.

Partnered with a CIA handler (Rosamund Pike) and given a cover story about making a speech at a Beirut university, Mason carefully threads his way through a city filled with checkpoints, trigger-happy militias and surly soldiers.

He forces himself to sober up in order to save his old friend, but cannot shake the feeling that Cal’s embassy cohorts (they’re played by Dean Norris, Shea Whigham, Douglas Hodge and Jonny Coyne) actually hope the prisoner is executed before he reveals under torture all the names of America’s secret agents in the region.

Yeah, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  Which is sort of SOP for the Middle East.

“Beirut” looks good, and Hamm nicely nails the world-weariness of a one-time optimist.

But by the time it’s all over you find yourself asking, “Is that all there is?”

| Robert W. Butler