Beirut (2018)

I heard about “Beirut” (2018) some time last year when Jon Hamm was interviewed on whatever NPR podcast I was listening to. At the time, I remember thinking to myself “Oh, it’s a movie with Jon Hamm, I should go see that,” as I was expecting to see it in theaters. I must have missed the bit where they identified it as a Netflix original, and thus without a theatrical release.
Which is probably for the best. I’m not sure it would have done great in theaters.
That’s not to say it’s a bad movie.
It’s just not great either.

As I was watching it, two different descriptors popped into my head:
* It’s a Scorsese film without the Scorsese
* It’s the spiritual sibling to 2012’s “Argo,” but less fun
Not exactly compliments.

The movie starts in 1972, then jumps to 1982 and follows Mason Skiels (Jon Hamm), an American diplomat to Lebanon who threw his life away after his wife is killed by a stray bullet, but is brought back to negotiate the release of a CIA operative captured by a rogue terrorist group.

For some reason, I spent the entire movie feeling a bit lost. No matter how far into the movie I got, I constantly felt like there was some crucial piece of backstory that the script had left out, leaving me with about 90% of the plot and relevant devices.
If I knew more about the real-life conflict between Israel and the PLO in Lebanon, maybe this would have made sense, but considering it happened roughly a decade before I was born and those events aren’t generally touched on when discussing the current war in the Middle East, I felt left out. 
And, frankly, that’s on the writers. If you’re going to make a movie for mass consumption about an event that happened three (almost four) decades earlier, you owe it to the audience to give them a useful frame of reference.

Unfortunately, because of this gap in explaining the history/setting that the plot is based around, many of the characters feel like they’re all going after different goals. There’s a military guy, a state department guy, another guy, a woman, and Skiel, and they’re all working together for the “same goal,” ostensibly, but the longer you watch it, the more you can’t help but think that they’re all trying to use each other to their own ends.
At one point there’s a “reveal” that a dowdy college professor is actually a flawless sniper. Which... cool? It doesn’t really make sense to the plot, or any of his character development previously, for him to have that skill set.

Now for a positive:
The visuals of the film were outstanding. I have no idea where the Netflix film crew went to make this: the scenery of 1982-era Lebanon showed a war-devastated city.
Either Netflix has the best CGI in existence, or they went out to somewhere in the Middle East that’s actually screwed up right now, like Raqqah, Syria. 

The soundtrack was that generic “Arabic” style music you’re familiar with that accompanies any movie that does a flyover of a Middle-Eastern city, so it was fitting, though not particularly original.

While Netflix is very good at making some outstanding shows, I’ve yet to find a movie of theirs that I like and want to recommend.
This one still doesn’t hit the mark.
It’s not that bad - it’s just about right to pre-load onto your phone or tablet and watch while you’re transiting somewhere.

I’d recommend “Argo” over this though, if you’re looking for something a little more engaging.