Jon Hamm: A star waiting on the right pitch to swing

The packaging of Don Draper sold more than the character; it put television viewers all over the world in the market for a dashing actor named Jon Hamm. Blessed with matinee idol good looks, Hamm cut a magnetic and mysterious figure that had audiences and critics instantly drawing comparisons to George Clooney. Both men were in their late thirties when they attained small-screen success, and neither looked the type to be confined to the broadcast medium.

But while it took Clooney four or five years to successfully transition out of “ER” to big screen stardom (his breakthrough being 1998’s “Out of Sight”), Hamm wasn’t hamstrung by the antsy, bobble-headed performance tics that dogged Clooney early in his movie career. He was still. His charming erudition led some to tag him as a debonair heir to Cary Grant, while others have seen the more stolidly handsome bearing of Gregory Peck. That no one could quite pin down Hamm’s appeal – sexy, dangerous and, at times, downright forbidding – felt like a plus for the Missouri-born-and-raised thespian.

It’s been eleven years since the premiere of “Mad Men,” and Hamm is more of a mystery today than he ever was as the enigmatic Draper. He is a star for sure, but a movie star? That designation requires one to take lead roles in potentially popular movies, and Hamm hasn’t exactly chased these down. Until this April’s “Beirut,” he had toplined only one studio movie in his career, the feel-good Disney baseball drama “Million Dollar Arm,” which was neither bomb nor hit. He’s had a blast in supporting roles (as a seductively sleazy villain in “Baby Driver” and a hilariously vapid cad in “Bridesmaids”), and willingly made a fool of himself as a three-time host of "Saturday Night Live," but it’s been three years since the end of “Mad Men.” What’s the strategy here?

In a 2014 interview, Hamm stressed that he’s in no hurry to make movie stardom happen, likening his approach to the “exacting” plate discipline of Barry Bonds. “He waits for his pitch,” said Hamm. “And when he sees it, it's out of the park. A big part of that is having the discipline to wait for your pitch, identifying your pitch and having the ability to put the bat on the ball when that pitch comes. The parallel to our lives is waiting for the right thing, and when the right thing comes, bang, pull the trigger and make sure you get it. That's the challenging part.”

Is “Beirut,” a political thriller in which Hamm stars as a burned-out ex-diplomat recruited by the CIA to negotiate the release of a hostage in the war-torn country, the right thing? Critics certainly think so. But Middle East dramas rarely perform well at the box office, and it’s not a great sign that the film’s distributor, Bleecker Street, is hedging its bets with a limited release.

Hamm could very well hit another commercial pop fly with “Beirut,” but does anyone think this would be enough to knock him out of the leading-man starting lineup? Of course not. He’ll keep getting cuts at an A-list level, and that is movie star clout. If "Beirut" is another miss, one thing’s for certain: Hamm will be patient, taking on the superhero pitches while he waits for the hanging curveball that could be his “Out of Sight” or "Ocean's Eleven."