Movie Review: American Made

American Made ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Doug Liman.

Written by: Gary Spinelli.

Starring: Tom Cruise (Barry Seal), Domhnall Gleeson (Monty 'Schafer'), Sarah Wright (Lucy Seal), Jesse Plemons (Sheriff Downing), Caleb Landry Jones (JB), Lola Kirke (Judy Downing), Jayma Mays (Dana Sibota), Alejandro Edda (Jorge Ochoa), Benito Martinez (James Rangel), E. Roger Mitchell (Agent Craig McCall), Jed Rees (Louis Finkle), Fredy Yate Escobar (Carlos Ledher), Mauricio Mejía (Pablo Escobar).

 

I really, truly wish that American Made was a better movie than it is – because for the first time in quite some time, Tom Cruise has based one of his performance on something other than stunts and action sequences. It must be said that Cruise does those things remarkably well – perhaps better than anyone else working right now – but he’s also a fine actor in his own right, and he so infrequently flexes those muscles that when he does, you want to like the movie. The problem with American Made though is that the whole thing feels so shallow and superficial – a film that desperately wants to be a Scorsese film circa GoodFellas – but the film doesn’t have that depth. It basically has one mode – amped up speed – that the film never settles down enough to hit you like it should.

 

In the film, Cruise plays Barry Seal – who in the late 1970s goes from a pilot working for TWA, to one working for the CIA – flying missions over Central America, gaining intel on the Communists in the area. But he needs to make more money – and eventually, the opportunity presents itself when in Columbia he is brought to meet Jorge Ochoa – as well as his partner Pablo Escobar – and is made an offer he cannot refuse. He will fly hundreds of kilos of cocaine back to America – and be very well paid for his trouble. The CIA will know, but basically look the other way as long as he doesn’t get caught. His wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright), is sure she likes this – that is, until he’s starts bringing home more money than they can even hide.

 

The film is directed by Doug Liman – and like many of his previous movies both good (Go, Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) the film moves at a breakneck pace for the entirety of its runtime. For the first hour or so, this works quite well – this is when Barry is flying high, there are lots of scene with him flying his plane in tight spots, or with him in various tense conversations, and situations – etc. – and it’s all quite fun. But in the back half of the movie – when everything comes crashing back down to earth, Liman, Cruise and company don’t slow down. People are murdered, this start going to shit, lives are ruined – and Liman doesn’t alter the tone of the movie. It’s like if the second half of Boogie Nights was pitched at the same tone of the never-ending party of the first half. Eventually, everything just seems hollow and meaningless.

 

It really is too bad, because Cruise seems to at least be trying to stretch beyond his heroic roles – even if just by the tiniest bit. He doesn’t seem to quite grasp that Barry is an asshole – but even that could work (assholes never grasp that they are in fact assholes) – but instead, he simply crashes and burns smiling the whole way. I liked the first hour of the movie - , and there are parts of the second half that work as well. The problem here is it never feels like anyone involved really grasped the implications of the movie – and the film just keeps on partying all the way to the end – and even then, doesn’t get it.