Beirut (2018)

[imsounoriginal]

Anyone else watch this? Thought it was surprisingly solid, minus a few issues.

[Show spoiler]The prologue is really cringe (what kind of American foreign officer just takes in a random kid off the streets without knowing everything about them?) and sets up a horribly cliched backstory for the Hamm character, but once the proper story starts up in 1982, things pick up nicely. There’s a lot of “we need to spell out everything that’s going on to each other” but I’m not exactly well-versed in this particular area/time period (not sure many are, which is probably why no one bothered seeing this) so I actually found this stuff kinda helpful. Not sure why Cal’s wife shows up at one point, she serves no purpose lol. Hamm is good, rest of the cast is fine but hardly does anything to make much of an impression. Pike is wasted, which seems to be the norm for her post-Gone Girl career thus far. As far as recent thrillers go, this about on the level of something like Kill the Messenger. There are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.

[BandyWJ]

We just watched this. I did really like it. While it wasn't an exemplar of the genre, it was indeed solid and an engaging film. I am also a big fan of Rosamund Pike, and I really look forward to her work in A Private War. If you haven't seen it yet, you might also want to check out Hostiles. I thought she was really great in that!