Beirut

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Readers often comment on my reviews. Some even jump the gun. Take for instance the email I received this week from a moviegoer:

“Have you seen the movie Beirut? Just saw it tonight. VERY well done.”

Everybody has an opinion. But why did I take this one-line review more seriously. Because Maureen has lived in the Middle East. She’s married to a Syrian. She has quite literally been there, done that.

“Beirut” is the new espionage thriller starring Jon Hamm. It’s currently sharing its secrets at Tropic Cinema.

This outing was written by Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter for the first four “Bourne” films. He even directed the fourth one.

You’ll have to admit he knows how to do thrillers.

And it was directed by Brad Anderson, the guy who helmed “Transsiberian” and “The Call,” notable thrillers in themselves.

“Beirut” gives Jon Hamm a meaty role that may establish him as a big-screen star. He’s already proved his mettle on TV’s “Mad Men.” Here, he gets to toss off one-liners with the insouciance of a world-weary James Bond.

Set in ‘80s Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, a retired diplomat (Hamm) is called back to service to act as an intermediary in the ransom of a friend held captive by terrorists.

Turns out, the locale is almost as much a star of the film as is Hamm’s character, a once suave diplomat named Mason Skiles. Here, Beirut has seen better days, reduced to being a battlefield between the PLO and Israelis.

In the opening, Skiles describes the city as a “boarding house without a landlord.” Located in the middle of a peninsula on the Mediterranean coast, Beirut has a sprawling population of 2-million people. Inhabited more than 5,000 years ago, this is one of the oldest cities in the world.

(Note: “Beirut” was actually filmed in Morocco rather than Lebanon, creating a controversy about the film from the git-go. The filmmakers argue that this is a period piece and the Beirut of 35 years ago looked nothing like it does today.)

In a flashback, we learn that Skiles and his wife Nadia (Leila Bekhti) took in 13-year-old orphan Karim (Yoav Sadian Rosenberg), but the boy’s terrorist brother (Hicham Ouraqa) snatches him and murders Skiles’s wife.

Ten years later, the alcoholic ex-diplomat is a lawyer reduced to mediating labor disputes in Boston when he gets the call:  His old friend Cal (Mark Pellegrino) has been kidnapped by the now-grown Karim (Idir Chender). Skiles is asked to return to Beirut and broker the CIA agent’s release. 

The last thing he wants to do.

Skiles is greeted by US State Department officials (Larry Pine, Shea Wigham, and Dean Norris), a bunch of bossy goons who aren’t very helpful. It’s his assigned handler (Rosamund Pike), a jittery undercover CIA field agent, that he has to to peg his safety on.

Skiles is facing a troubled situation in a troubled city.

“Beirut” is a slower moving story than Tony Gilroy’s “Bourne” thrillers; it’s more akin to his masterful “Michael Clayton” intrigue. John le Carré would be proud.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com