For a film titled Beirut, there is little of the real Beirut to see…
Shot in a Moroccan town, the set says more about the West’s vague imaginings of a Middle Eastern city in the eighties, than it does about Beirut. Indeed, there are few clues to ground us there: no visible landmarks and no signs of culture. We’re offered little more than generic Arabic music and Middle Eastern actors with ambiguous accents.
This somewhat caused concern back in January when the trailer first hit our screens, and the film’s release did little to squash it. In the opening scene, a white American compares Beirut to a “boarding house without a landlord,” proceeding to dilute all the characteristics of the city’s culture via the vast catch-all net of “the Middle East.”
Perhaps Director Brad Anderson would argue that Beruit is less about the city itself than what it represents to the protagonist, Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm). The Beirut Mason finds isn’t the exotic and flamboyant city from his happily-married earlier years. It is, like him, violent, hopeless and fragmented. In the same way Beirut turns to terrorism and anarchy following the shattered void left by the civil war, Mason turns to alcoholism to fill the void left by the death of his wife. The setting of 1982 is as important to Beirut’s modern history as it is to Mason’s process of coping with loss.
Written by Bourne move screenwriter Tony Gilroy, Beirut‘s tightly plotted script follows all the right tropes of any successful frenetic espionage thriller. The goal is to mediate the release of a hostage kidnapped by a fringe Palestinian terrorist group, but the plot quickly evolves into a larger conspiracy involving reliable ally Sandy Crowder (Rosamund Pike) and fighting against other American attachés who seem to each have their own agenda.
Gilroy likes forcing his protagonists to break the rules, but he does so with a sense of seriousness and sobriety. At times, however, this can come across somewhat ham-fisted as he tries to drive the point of a metaphor across. Nowhere is this more notable than when Mason chats with an old socialite friend of his in her abandoned house, next to a gigantic broken chandelier, as she drinks warm white wine. For a film that treats its subjects so seriously, it sometimes lacks subtlety.
Yet there is a certain charm to Beirut. It has that same DNA of Syriana or The Spy who came from the cold, an adult candour that doesn’t really need to surrender to teen humour or post-modern winks. And amidst questionable historical accuracy, John Hamm puts in a commendable performance as Mason, acting with all the gravitas of a star like Cary Grant. There are good intentions here, but not enough to elevate the film above a gentle nostalgia.
The U.K’s title for the film – The Negotiator (not to be confused with the 1998 action drama starring Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson) – does more justice for the film, keeping its focus on the one characteristic of Mason that represents both his downfall and resurrection. Naming the film Beirut is reminiscent of a spy thriller tradition that uses the city of its setting as an allegory of the character’s pathos. But at least Vienna in The Third Man is mysterious, and Berlin in Bridge of Spies is distinctive. And in both, the setting is as important as the character. If Mason is a genuine character, holding his own personal, distinctive suffering, so does the city of Beirut deserve the same treatment.
The Best
Jon Hamm leading a reliable cast, and the tightness of that plot. It’s airtight!
The Rest
A good stylistic approach and a pinch more of subtlety and this could be a solid recommendation. Do you yearn for those stern thrillers that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy seemed to have killed? Then go ahead, you’ll be in good hands.
Rating: ★★★
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