Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of films that have been based on true stories that seem outright ridiculous to those who have never heard of them and yet totally happened. This has ranged from films like Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, which told the story of hard partying, drug-using stock traders, to Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain, the tale of a group of small-minded bodybuilders who partake in kidnapping and extortion to try and get rich. And as for the latest entry in this ‘genre’ of crazy stories that really happened, we have American Made. This film tells the story of Barry Seal, who went from being a commercial airline pilot to a drug and weapons smuggling informant for both the CIA and the Medellin Cartel in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It’s a film that certainly has a lot of big names working on it, that’s for sure. In the director’s chair is Doug Liman, who’s given us quite a lot of hits over the years including 1996’s Swingers, the first Jason Bourne film, 2002’s The Bourne Identity, and 2014’s cult hit Edge of Tomorrow. This film also sees him reuniting with his lead actor from Edge of Tomorrow, the one and only Tom Cruise, in what is shaping up to be a more dramatic turn for the legendary action star. And together, they give us an entertaining, albeit a bit flat, black comedy that’s fully bolstered by Cruise’s excellent performance in the lead role.
In the late 70’s, pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works for Trans World Airlines, having notably been one of the youngest pilots ever in the company’s history. However, he decides to leave TWA when he is approached with a ‘better offer’ from CIA agent Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). After being given his own plane by Schafer, Barry is tasked with flying reconnaissance missions for the CIA in South America. Soon, this escalates into Barry serving as a liaison between the CIA and Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega. However, not long after this, Barry is then approached by Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) and Pablo Escobar (Mauicio Mejia) of the Medellin cartel. The cartel then proceeds to have Barry smuggle their drugs into the U.S. for them. However, when the DEA soon comes into the picture, Barry is forced to move to the small town of Mena, Arkansas with his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) and their three kids to avoid suspicion. But that doesn’t stop Barry from continuing to work with both the CIA and the cartel, and thanks to the continued success of his operations, Barry is able to amass more and more wealth while also maintaining the secrecy of his endeavors through his ‘charitable’ actions in the community of Mena. Soon, though, Barry finds himself in an increasingly tense situation as he tries to balance everything that he’s been getting involved in.
While I usually don’t like to make a lot of comparisons between films, it’s safe to say that American Made shares quite a few similarities with The Wolf of Wall Street. After all, both films are about mildly successful men who get ahead in life when they partake in business practices that aren’t exactly legal. Both films also maintain an irreverent tone throughout with various bits of black comedy thrown in. But just like Wolf of Wall Street, American Made is a solidly entertaining ‘dark comedy’ based on a true story that only gets crazier and crazier once Seal begins to get involved with multiple parties at the same time. Liman’s direction is excellent and the film’s strong pacing gives it a fast-paced feel without ever seeming like it’s rushing through the plot. And thanks to the screenplay by newcomer Gary Spinelli, there are plenty of great humorous bits of dialogue throughout, primarily whenever Barry is narrating (again, like Wolf of Wall Street). I also appreciate the efforts made by Liman and his crew to give this film a nice retro aesthetic, and I’m not just talking about its status as a period piece set in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Right from the opening credits, which utilize the old logos of the production companies that worked on this film, American Made has a nice old-school aesthetic that makes it seem like the film was genuinely shot in the 80’s.
However, if I did have one gripe with this film, it’d be that the overall proceedings can sometimes be a bit dry. And that’s mainly because the character development in this film is admittedly rather slim, meaning that you don’t really connect with any of its characters apart from Barry. And even then, he’s still kind of ‘just there’ as far as main protagonists go. Still, Tom Cruise does do a fantastic job in the role. As some tend to point out, it’s been quite some time since Cruise’s days as a dramatic actor. After all, that’s where his career initially started before the Mission: Impossible franchise turned him into the action star that we know him as today. Thus, it can be argued that this is one of the rare instances where Cruise delves out of the action genre for once to remind us that he is very much more than just an action star. And here, he’s incredibly charismatic (as usual) even in the role of a morally grey character. In short, Cruise very much carries the film, and while most of the supporting roles are minor by comparison, there are still some great standouts from the film’s supporting cast. Sarah Wright has solid chemistry with Cruise in the role of Barry’s wife Lucy, who gets to have some great back-and-forth moments with her husband whenever he starts acting crazy. And as for the most prominent member of the supporting cast, Domhnall Gleeson, he too works great with Cruise as Barry’s government liaison, who works just as much as Barry does in his line of work to move up the ranks within the CIA.
I think many will agree that Doug Liman has been one of the most consistently reliable directors in the film industry. While he has had some critical misfires over the years, he’s also given us plenty of great films as well, and American Made is no exception. From the looks of it, it seems like this film is a decently faithful take on the real-life events that make up its story. And sure, like any film based on a true story, there clearly must have been some deviations from the truth; however, as Barry states in the trailer, ‘some of this s*** really happened’. And I guess you can say that it’s only fitting that Liman was the one to tell this story given that his father Arthur was, in fact, connected to this whole ordeal as the chief counsel for the investigations surrounding the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-80’s that had basically been spawned from all this. Sure enough, American Made is a well-made drama mixed with great bits of dark humor. Now, granted, that doesn’t mean that it’s flawless, as it does suffer from not really having much emotional depth to it. However, it’s all worth it for one of the best recent performances of Tom Cruise’s career. While he has certainly proven himself to be one of the best action stars in the business thanks to films like Mission: Impossible, Jack Reacher, and Edge of Tomorrow, a film like this proves that he’s also a great actor when given a great script to work with. And while American Made may not exactly be one of his best films, it still stands as an entertaining crime drama based around an interesting tidbit of this country’s history.
Rating: 4/5
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