Ghosts of Beirut

While there is a villain whose motivations we can comprehend, Ghosts of Beirut never dedicates time to truly explore how the American villains in the story play a huge part in creating the terrorists they work so passionately to eliminate.

“Ghosts of Beirut,” offers up a “Zero Dark Thirty”-esque search for Mughniyeh, spanning multiple decades and perspectives. But in juggling all of these points of view, it conveniently forgets to make any of them particularly interesting, resulting in a stilted spy drama that refuses to elevate itself above mere procedure.

Ghosts Of Beirut tries to take the exceedingly complex Lebanese Civil War and tries to make it into a good-guys-bad-guys spy thriller, but fails to do so simply because that time in history can’t be boiled down so easily.