American Made Review
An enjoyably freewheeling tone and Tom Cruise's star wattage combine to make this an entertaining true story. Packed with an astonishing sequence of absurd twists and turns, it's the kind of movie that could only be based on real-life events. But Cruise kind of overwhelms the material, turning it into a film about his trademark cock-of-the-walk swagger rather than an actual man who got caught up in a series of outrageous situations.
It opens in 1978, as airline pilot Barry Seal (Cruise) is approached by shifty CIA handler Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) and offered a great job flying over Central America and taking spy photos of freedom fighters and terrorists. With his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright Olsen) oblivious, the job soon escalates into an arms-delivery service across the region. This introduces Barry to Colombian drug lord Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda), who offers him huge amounts of cash to carry cocaine back to America on his return flights. Soon Barry is running a massive business under the protection of the CIA, DEA and Reagan's White House. But these are dangerous people, and a series of shaky events reminds Barry how precarious his position is.
The film is narrated with videotapes Barry records in 1986 to document everything he got up to over the previous eight years. This gives director Doug Liman and screenwriter Gary Spinelli a framework on which to hang a series of rapid-fire set pieces, and the story leaps quickly from one crazy moment to the next, rarely pausing for breath. This is a lot of fun to watch, especially because the details scattered throughout the script are so jaw-dropping. But this race through the material doesn't offer much time for character development, and Barry never seems like a person in his own right: he's Tom Cruise, flashing that white grin while diving into a series of dangerous stunts.
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