Grateful for a respite from his imploding marriage, Hamburg newspaperman Georg (Bruno Ganz - the American Friend, Luther) arrives in civil war-torn Beirut to chronicle the bloody Lebanese war. Inside a shell-pitted hotel, Georg and his photographer colleague Hoffman (cult director Jerzy Skolimowski - Deep End, the Shout) join a cynical international coterie of competitive fellow journalists. Outside, they take their lives in their own hands, dodging both Christian and Palestinian bullets and conducting interviews that are always just a trigger pull away from becoming executions. When Georg's affair with a beautiful German ex-pat widow (Fassbinder icon Hanna Schygulla) evolves into something more than just an indulgence, Beirut's bloody whirlpool of brutality threatens to claim Georg's neutrality and his civilized self-control.