The greater problems with Craig Borten’s slushy screenplay, though, are its extreme earnestness — Sergio’s lengthy conversation with a female Timorese weaver is a sinkhole of sap — and an overemphasis on the love affair between the married Sergio and Carolina Larriera (Ana de Armas), an alluring United Nations economist. They meet in East Timor, lock lips in a downpour, and their ensuing, soft-focus romance has the effect of smoothing away any narrative grit or sense of the cerebral knife-edge that Sergio walked with such skill. Even his meeting with the infamous Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary looks like just a friendly chat.

Moreover, the choppiness of the storytelling gives short shrift to the bombing and Sergio’s tense interaction with L. Paul Bremer III (Bradley Whitford), President George W. Bush’s representative in Iraq. Tasked with restoring order and enabling legal elections, Sergio and his team are appalled by what they view as the United States’ excessive use of force and human-rights violations. The two men symbolize the eternal push and pull between diplomacy and violence, and their relationship could have given the movie the intellectual heft it so badly needs.

“We’re mopping up resistance,” Bremer tells Sergio at one point, curtly explaining the rising number of detainees. He forgot he was talking to a man who had made a career out of doing just that, and without detaining anyone.

Sergio

Rated R for nudity and violence. In English, Portuguese, Spanish and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix.