Review: American Made
At 55 years of age and after nearly four decades of critical and commercial success, Tom Cruise has nothing left to prove yet his eagerness to please and maintain his foothold has barely abated. Like most qualities, this can be a blessing and a curse as this year alone proves. After sleepwalking through this summer's The Mummy, Cruise delivers one of his most energised performances in American Made, a true-life tale that reunites the actor with his Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman.
Though Cruise has confirmed a sequel to his career-defining role in Top Gun (Top Gun: Maverick, slated for release in 2019), in many respects his turn as American Made's Barry Seal could also be viewed as what Maverick might have become once his hotshot days were behind him. Seal clearly still feels the need for speed, or at least something more exciting than his job as a TWA commercial pilot where he has to resort to faking inflight turbulence to stave off the boredom of his routine. He makes a bit of money on the side by smuggling cigars from Cuba into the U.S., a gig which goes very much noticed by CIA operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), who recruits him in 1978 to fly a twin-propeller plane and collect intelligence via the cameras installed in the plane. Soon Seal is also being tasked to fly down to Panama as a courier, dropping off cash in exchange for intelligence reports from Colonel Noriega.
Seal's constant flights in and out of Panama soon catch the attention of Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) and Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejía), who propose paying Seal $2K for every kilo of cocaine he gets onto U.S. soil. After a slight hiccup that lands Seal in jail and forces him to uproot his family from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to the tiny town of Mena, Arkansas to avoid being picked up by the DEA, his life becomes increasingly more absurd as Schafer soon has him transporting AK-47s to the Contras that President Reagan is supporting in their guerrilla war against the Sandinista-run government. Schafer even has him fly in Contras so they can undergo military training on the 2,000 acres of land that Schafer provided to Seal as his home base. It's inevitable that things would spiral out of control, what with Seal running guns to the Contras and then to the cartel, who then have him running their cocaine to the Contras, who then sail it into Miami.
Liman and screenwriter Gary Spinelli present the affair as an almost lighthearted farce. There's a tremendous amount of comedic touches, whether it be Seal's own surprise at surviving scrape after scrape (at one point, he manages to evade the DEA, FBI, ATF, and state patrol), but especially how he is making so much money that there's literally nowhere to hide it anymore - his backyard is a congested graveyard of buried money; a year's supply of Samsonite luggages are filled to the brim with unlaundered money; every bank in Mena is stuffed with his millions. The film's blithe spirit does allow for moments of pathos, such as Caleb Landry Jones' turn as Seal's reckless brother-in-law, though one sobering image late in the film strikes a discordant note despite its poignant perfection.
Cinematographer César Charlone's restless camera exacerbates the agitation and excitement and his feverish palette renders the heat so palpably that one can feel the sweat prickle the flesh. If there's one major quibble to made about the film, it is that the characters are so firmly secondary to Cruise's Seal that actors like Jesse Plemons and Lola Kirke are wasted in roles that may have been more substantial before the editing process. Sarah Wright, as Seal's wife, brings grit and sass to what could easily have been a Southern Barbie role, though even she gets sidelined by the narrative. One can't necessarily blame the filmmakers since Cruise is so excellent in the role - desperate characters have always brought out the best in him - but his best moments in the film are not necessarily the solo turns. It's when he's persuading his wife to trust him, realising how much of a liability his brother-in-law truly is, and when his cocky smile freezes and drops when Schafer reveals just how much he knows about him.
American Made
Directed by: Doug Liman
Written by: Gary Spinelli
Starring: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jayma Mays, Jesse Plemons, Lola Kirke, Caleb Landry Jones, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía
