The Movie: American Made
The Director: Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow)
The Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, Alejandro Edda, Benito Martinez
The Story: The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair.
The Review:
The marketing team behind this movie really wants you to know how wild and crazy this (based on a true) story is and director Doug Liman does his best to fulfill that promise. Most people know of or have at least heard of the "Iran Contra Affair" which revealed just how much President Reagan's war on drugs was costing the nation. What wasn't really known was the story of a pilot named Barry Seal, played in the movie by Tom Cruise, who was key figure in allowing the CIA to have access to Central America where it proliferated in weapons, drugs, soldiers, and the building of unstable nations.
Liman does a decent enough job of telling the story although I felt like the craziness was a bit oversold, especially when we've recently seen similar types of wtf, true story films like The Big Short, Pain and Gain, and War Dogs. That being said, the real point of this movie is to showcase the fact that Tom Cruise is still one of Hollywood's biggest, most charismatic personalities working today. His big, cheesy grin is in just about every scene and you can't help but like him on screen, even if his character is facilitating war and drug addiction up and down both North and Central America. I guess that's my main issue with the film is that it glorifies things and people who caused a lot of harm and made tons of money off of their efforts without any real consequences.
The Verdict:
American Made is a slick and stylish look at the excessive and underhanded efforts of the CIA to combat communism in Central America while supplying North America with cocaine. Tom Cruise delivers the goods although he ends up flying circles around a story that is lackluster in comparison and not quite worthy of his big screen star power.
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