From 1975 to 1990, the world watched as Beirut was decimated by a complex, sectarian civil war that left, by some estimates, 150,000 people dead and a million Lebanese displaced. In the years since, the word “Beirut” has become shorthand for war zone, bombings, devastation.



Perhaps that’s why so many Arabs bristled when a trailer released in January for the hostage drama “Beirut,” starring Jon Hamm, seemed to reduce the city to a flashy backdrop for action-movie explosions — a backdrop devoid of Beirut’s unique topography that includes mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.

The film, which comes out Wednesday, is set in 1982, a critical point in the war, and was primarily shot thousands of miles away in Morocco. None of the top-billed actors are Lebanese, and the trailer is rife with menacing accents, none of which are Lebanese.

Luckily, nuanced depictions of Lebanon, its people and the realities of its civil war have for years existed in movies, on television and in books.