The true story of a Korean diplomat kidnapped in civil war-torn Lebanon in the ’80s becomes the most exciting, most entertaining buddy picture in years —“Ransomed” — the best action pic of the summer.

Sorry, Mr. Cruise.

Shoot-outs, car chases, sanctioned and unsanctioned cash transactions, governmental turf wars, sacrifice and near-savagery roll by, with the occasional pause for “You can’t scam a scammer” bickering (in subtitled Korean and some English), a feral dogpack attack, a rock fight and a couple of dangling-from-a-tall-building moments, played for thrills and laughs in Kim Seong-hun’s lightly fictionalized telling of this true story.

In the mid-80s, in the latter third of the Lebanese Civil War, Korea’s ambassador in Beirut is kidnapped. With all the factions fighting there, he gets lost in the Land of Many Militias shuffle, and is all but forgotten.

But a year and a half later, he gets just free enough to reach out, by phone and in code, to his old department. Disgruntled foreign service worker Min-Joon Lee (Ha Jung-woo) is all alone in the office to take that call and figure out who is tapping that departmental code.

Korea’s foreign service springs into action. But “Hold on there,” grumbles the KCIA. With the 1988 Olympics coming up and a national policy of not-paying-ransom, this could be a national embarassment, if not a humiliation if it all goes sideways.

Min-joon Lee volunteers to take the poison-pill gig, be fall-guy if this doesn’t work out. But he’s no fool. He does it on the condition that he be promoted to serve in the Korean embassy in the U.S.

A U.S. CIA intermediary (Burn Gorman, arrogant, dismissive but oozing competence) is consulted. A Swiss art dealer can help move the cash. And there is a network of Lebanese on the ground arranged to facilitate matters.

But the best-laid plans go instantly awry as the cagey and greedy Lebanese police are determined to catch any “hostage negotiator” coming into the country and steal their money.

Min-joon, who exaggerated his service in the Marines to get the gig, finds himself on the lam and almost on his own, save for his accidental connection with the one South Korean taxi driver in all of Beirut, Pan-su (Ju Ji-hoon).

The guy hands out tokens with “Trust Me” and his phone number written on them, telling us straight away that he’s a hustler and not to be trusted.

He dotes on his Mercedes 240, official taxi of the Middle East. And he reluctantly agrees to drive Min-joon around. Even as Pan-su finds himself drawn deeper into the unraveling debacle of this negotiation/hand-off, we have to wonder, can Min-joon trust this guy when the chips are down?

Buttoned-down Ha Jung-woo of “The Handmaiden” and “Tunnel” and mop-topped Ju Ji-hoon of “The Spy Gone North” have classic “buddy” thriller chemistry. Lies and double-crosses burden the relationship, but each guy clings to the other — one because this diplomat might be able to get him to America, the other because he needs a multi-lingual assistant with local knowledge.

When this militia has the hostage and that militia wants him and/or the money, it helps to have someone with the inside dope.

“Christian guys like it when you speak French to them” at Christian militia checkpoints.

The chases and narrow escapes are bullet-riddled and harrowing, in the spirit of “Escape from Mogadishu,” an earlier true story/thriller about a Korean diplomatic crisis in the Middle East.

It is written in the Good Book of Screen Comedy — introduced in the chapters on St. Charlie Chaplin and St. Harold Lloyd, most pithily practiced by St. Buster of Keaton — that whenever a character grabs a rusty gutter drain pipe on the side of an aged apartment building, she or he must have it break off the wall and dangle over the street on it. It’s always funny.

The players handle the light stuff beautifully, but director Kim Seon-hun (“Tunnel”) never loses track of the gravitas, the life at stake, the cruel way Mr. Secretary Oh is mistreated by his captors.

“Duty,” patriotic or otherwise, plays into the actions of some more than others, giving the action comedy a sober, sentimental edge.

But the jaunty action beats, the clever problem solving — inventing which corners to back our hero or heroes into and how they escape each jam — are what sell “Ransomed.”

The villains are under-developed — even the jerk who runs the KCIA. And the finale has a touch of the over-explained and over-played.

But “Ransomed” is still a pulse-pounding ride, a piece of history unburdened by the literal facts and a lean, high-stakes action picture that could give any “Mission: Impossible” outing a run for its money.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Ha Jung-woo, Ju Ji-hoon, Fehd Benchemsi and Burn Gorman

Credits: Directed by Kim Seong-hun, scripted by Kim Jung-yeon, and Yeo Jung-mi A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:12