Starring Jon Hamm. In English and Arabic, with English subtitles. Rated 14A

Jon Hamm is the animating force of this somewhat stiff but still engaging spy thriller, which attempts to Ameri-simplify the impossibly convoluted battles that have plagued Lebanon for more than 50 years.

Our favourite ex-Mad Man plays Mason Skiles, a dedicated diplomat—not a cop, soldier, or spook, for a change—ensconced in 1972 Beirut, when it was still called “the Paris of the Orient”. He has a beautiful Lebanese wife (Leïla Bekhti), a hilltop villa, a circle of sharp international friends, and the couple is just about to adopt a Palestinian orphan when all hell breaks loose.

Ten years later, Mason’s a broken-down drunk with no family or fixed address and his once-famous negotiating skills are devoted to solving petty labour disputes. At least the only one getting bombed is him. Then, in classic just-one-more-job fashion, he gets sucked back into Levantine trouble. A catastrophic civil war left the capitol in ruins, and now the CIA point man (Mark Pellegrino) who was his best pal back in the day has been kidnapped by one of the many factions in the uneasy standoff between Christian, pan-Arab, and PLO militias that roam the rubble.

Specifically requested to negotiate some kind of swap, Skiles doesn’t know who to trust. Rosamund Pike plays the minder who fills him in. This may be a case of “dangling a skirt in front of a disoriented 40-year-old widower”, in the words of another Agency type (Dean Norris) who’s really calling the shots.

Directed by episodic-TV veteran Brad Anderson and written by political thrill-rider Tony Gilroy (he penned Michael Clayton, several Bourne movies, and the recent Rogue One), the movie doesn’t see her that way, but it doesn’t know quite what to do with a female costar, either—especially if she isn’t Jessica Chastain.

Other players include a military-ops guy (Boardwalk Empire’s Shea Wigham), a top Israeli official (Alon Aboutboul), and a State Department flak (Larry Pine). And what do you want to bet that the little Palestinian boy is still around? Each is itching to put his own spin on the situation, even if they all have less presence than does Hamm, who manages to give the tale a lived-in immediacy the rest of it lacks.

We know things went south again after 1982, as the end credits document, and north, with Syria garnering even more horrible headlines. Beirut doesn’t explain what happened, really, but at least knows it did.