diplomat just before the worst night of his life. Hamm plays Mason, who we meet in 1972 as a happy U.S. As such, this is Hamm’s best leading role to date, a reminder of how good he can be when he’s given the right material. He’s a great writer when it comes to dismantling traditional star power, and Hamm fits that model perfectly. Gilroy loves handsome men forced into morally gray areas, writing such roles for George Clooney (“ Michael Clayton”), Clive Owen (“ Duplicity”), and Matt Damon (he wrote the original Bourne trilogy). On paper, Tony Gilroy seems like the perfect writer for Jon Hamm. He’s been great in supporting roles in films like “ The Town” and “ Baby Driver,” but a lead role that took advantage of his charisma never really came. After the award-winning success of “Mad Men,” the world kept waiting for filmmakers to translate Jon Hamm’s star power to the big screen … and it never really happened. To enjoy “Beirut,” one needs to look at it less as an examination of a place and more as a vehicle for a star. Mason calls it a boarding house, but “Beirut” seems remarkably uninterested in the actual cultural identity of the people who live there. However, it’s difficult to shake the sense that some of what’s happening here is that classic Middle Eastern villainous set dressing-bearded men, lit in shadows, with generic Arabic music playing in the background. And the fact that this is a period piece helps explain the change of filming venue as Beirut 35 years ago looked nothing like it looks today.
Yes, it’s true that the trailer doesn’t come close to capturing the intricacies of the plot here, one of those classic Tony Gilroy contraptions in which the American characters, especially those hiding under government orders, are complicit and arguably more truly evil than the people on the ground. (And the fact that it filmed in Morocco and not Lebanon didn’t help that controversy.) So, the first question in your mind may be to the validity of these complaints. “But I’m afraid George never gave any advice on what to do when a guest arrives with a dead body in the back seat of their car.” Linville’s dream casting for the role of a host in that awkward predicament? “Morgan Freeman.In the opening scenes of “Beirut,” the suave Mason Skiles ( Jon Hamm) describes the location that also gives Brad Anderson’s new film a title as a “boarding house without a landlord.” This kind of dismissive chatter about a tumultuous part of the world is likely going to inflame the recent controversy about the perception that “Beirut” is just another film that uses the Middle East for backdrops and bad guys. For instance, at book launch parties, “having enough ice is much more important than having enough canapes. Linville told me from his home in London that Plimpton had taught him many things over the years. Later, they were dismayed to find out the warlord knew where they were staying, because he had delivered jeroboams more of the vintage to their hotels.ĭetermined to finish the bottles off that very night, Osborne recounted a story that had long haunted him, of a roadside accident during weekend revels at a castle in the Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco. When the pistol-packing potentate proudly told them he’d made the wine himself and asked “You like it?,” the two conflict-avoiding columnists eagerly assured him they loved it. That same weekend, Osborne and Linville were dining sumptuously with an Arab warlord. One of them, Christopher Hitchens, a man who had vowed never to encounter a swastika without defacing it, was roughed up by a gang of Syrians for graffitiing their sign.
The acclaimed novel came out last year, but Linville first heard the story in 2005, in the aftermath of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, when scores of journalists descended on Beirut. James Linville, a screenwriter and George Plimpton’s former deputy at The Paris Review, has optioned the film rights to “The Forgiven” by Lawrence Osborne.
What started as a wine-fueled story in a war-ravaged Beirut hotel room became a book - and now it could be a movie.
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