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American Made

2017, Comedy/Drama, 1h 55m

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Critics Consensus

American Made 's fast-and-loose attitude with its real-life story mirrors the cavalier -- and delightfully watchable -- energy Tom Cruise gives off in the leading role. Read critic reviews

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Barry Seal, a TWA pilot, is recruited by the CIA to provide reconnaissance on the burgeoning communist threat in Central America and soon finds himself in charge of one of the biggest covert CIA operations in the history of the United States. The operation spawns the birth of the Medellin cartel and almost brings down the Reagan White House.

Rating: R (Some Sexuality/Nudity|Language Throughout)

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Adventure

Original Language: English

Director: Doug Liman

Producer: Brian Grazer , Brian Oliver , Doug Davison , Kim Roth , Ray Angelic , Tyler Thompson

Writer: Gary Spinelli

Release Date (Theaters): Sep 29, 2017  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Dec 19, 2017

Box Office (Gross USA): $51.3M

Runtime: 1h 55m

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Production Co: Hercules Film Fund, Brian Grazer, Vendian Entertainment, Quadrant Pictures

Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

Cast & Crew

Domhnall Gleeson

Monty "Schafer"

Sarah Wright

Jesse Plemons

Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones

Dana Sibota

Judy Downing

E. Roger Mitchell

Agent Craig McCall

Alejandro Edda

Jorge Ochoa

Benito Martinez

James Rangel

Louis Finkle

Gary Spinelli

Screenwriter

Brian Grazer

Brian Oliver

Doug Davison

Ray Angelic

Tyler Thompson

Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis

Executive Producer

Terry Dougas

Brandt Andersen

Eric Greenfeld

Michael Finley

Michael Bassick

César Charlone

Cinematographer

Andrew Mondshein

Film Editing

Dylan Tichenor

Christophe Beck

Original Music

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Critic Reviews for American Made

Audience reviews for american made.

The combo of director Doug Liman, writer Gary Spinelli and actor Tom Cruise all deliver huge in a film that serves as entertainment and a peek inside the corruption factory of the Reagan presidency.

American Made is a fascinating biopic about Barry Seal, a commercial pilot who worked with the CIA to run drugs and guns in South America. Set in the early 1980s, to combat the spread of communism the CIA recruits Pan Am pilot Barry Seal to fly recon missions in South America and eventually to run guns to the Contras; but things soon start to spiral out of the control. Tom Cruise gives a pretty strong performance, and director Doug Liman does a good job at giving the film a unique style; blending a political thriller with a crime drama, with some lighthearted comedy mixed in. Also, the sets, costumes, and soundtrack are all well-done, giving an authentic early '80s look and feel. Entertaining and fun, American Made is an interesting look at a little known chapter of the Cold War.

It's a pretty poor imitation of Scorsese, mostly because of the overly frantic editing and the fact that we just don't get a good sense of who Barry Seal is.

Say what you will of Tom Cruise as I'm fully aware that some don't take to him at all but, personally, I've always been a fan. That said, it's been some years since I've fully embraced a film of his as nothing has really showcased his abilities. As good as they were, I turned a little cold on the Mission: Impossible series where Cruise seemingly focused on being an action star for a while. American Made, however, sees him return to what he does best. This is a tailor made role for the likes of Cruise's cocksure mannerisms and shit-kicking grin. In fact, the film thrives on him in the lead which makes this very enjoyable entertainment. Plot: In 1978, skilled airline pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is contacted by CIA agent Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleason), who employs him to photograph communist facilities over Central America. Barry accepts but it's not long before he's contacted by the Medellin Cartel to transport drugs back to the USA. Before he knows it, Barry is making millions in drug and gun-running which involves everyone from the FBI, the ATF, the CIA and the the Contras in Nicaragua. The longer it goes on, however, the harder it becomes for Barry to get out. I've now lost count of the amount of films that portray a character that spirals out of control once involved in some drug running or criminal activity. Tv's Breaking Bad became a critically acclaimed phenomenon for a start but the ones that spring to mind, when comparing American Made to anything, are the 70's set Johnny Depp film Blow and, in terms of its style and vibrancy, Scorsese's Goodfellas. Now, I wouldn't put this in the same class as Scorsese's masterpiece but it's equally as good as (if not better than) the aforementioned Ted Demme film. There's a lot of style and pizazz to Doug Liman's portrayal of this very interesting time in American history. He gleefully exposes the political machinations behind the events and doesn't pull punches in indicting President Ronald Reagan, Governor Bill Clinton and the CIA in there involvement with such a huge drug running cartel and their intentions to quash a South American uprising from the Sandinistas. Put simply, everyone had their fingers in a lot of pies at this time in America and Barry Seal happened to be "the gringo that always delivered". It's serious stuff but what makes it so enjoyable is because Cruise injects such a tongue-in-cheek zaniness to the whole affair while Liman confidently handles the material with a great eye for the 70's and 80's period detail and intercuts the film with news footage of the events as and when they came to public knowledge. It's a good case of truth being stranger than fiction and that's what grabs your attention as you roll with the ridiculously over-the-top scenarios. Cruise is hugely appealing here. His southern accent adds another dimension and character to his resumé that's refreshing to see. He can play these characters in his sleep but it's been a while since we've seen it. It feels like old school Cruise and it's a pleasure to have him return. Mark Walker

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American Made

• 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.
• Barry Seal was just an ordinary pilot who worked for TWA before he was recruited by the CIA in 1978. His work in South America eventually caught the eye of the Medellín Cartel, associated with Pablo Escobar, who needed a man with his skill set. Barry became a drug trafficker, gun smuggler and money launderer. Soon acquiring the title, 'The gringo that always delivers'. — Viir khubchandani
• In 1978, the skilled and ambitious TWA pilot Barry Seal smuggles Cuban cigars to increase his income. Out of the blue, he is contacted by the CIA agent Monty Schafer, who asks him to work for the CIA photographing facilities over Central America using a state-of-art small plane. Soon Barry contacts General Noriega as a courier for the CIA and is contacted by the Medellin Cartel that wants him to transport drugs to the USA. Then Schafer asks Barry to carry weapons for the Contras in Nicaragua. Barry invites pilots that are his friends and plots routes to smuggle drugs for the cartel. The CIA closes eyes to the scheme and Barry becomes richer and richer. He uses the Arkansas town Mena to launder his money. But the DEA and the FBI are tracking him down. When the CIA shuts down the scheme, Barry is left alone and arrested by the agencies. What will happen to his family and him? — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• 1978. Barry Seal, an airline pilot, is recruited by the CIA to fly special transport missions in Central America. Initially it is a matter of information-for-supplies but ultimately he ends up being a drug transporter for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel and supplying anti-Communist groups, including the Nicaraguan Contras, with weapons. — grantss
• Knowing that he smuggles Cuban cigars into the United States as a profitable side hustle, CIA agent, Monty Schafer, recruits the daredevil TWA pilot, Barry Seal, to take aerial photographs of Sandinista bases in 1978. Before long, with Barry acting as a liaison, delivering money to General Manuel Noriega in exchange for information, Pablo Escobar 's infamous Medellín Cartel enters the picture, with its co-founders, Jorge Ochoa and Carlos Lehder, wanting to have a piece of the action. Now, Seal finds himself leading a peril-laden, cocaine-dusted triple life, and Schafer, as greedy as ever, keeps assigning increasingly dangerous tasks to his thrill-seeking go-getter, including flying guns to the Nicaraguan Contras, leading to the late 1980s Iran/Contra scandal, during the second term of the Ronald Reagan Administration. — Nick Riganas
• Set in the year 1978, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) works as a pilot for Trans World Airlines. He is married to Lucy (Sarah Wright) and has two children with her, with a third on the way. While at a bar one night, Barry is found by a man saying his name is Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). He is familiar with Barry's work as a pilot, but Schafer offers him a chance to make better money by taking on reconnaissance missions for the CIA in a smaller plane with cameras just south of the border. Schafer convinces Barry that he would be working for the good guys, but it would have to be kept completely secret, even from his own family. He then lets Barry take the plane out for a ride. As he begins his new job, Barry starts making tapes documenting his travels and exploits. He flies over countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Schafer is so impressed with the photos that Barry brings back to him, that he assigns Barry a new task of being a bag man between the CIA and General Manuel Noriega (Alberto Ospino) in Panama. On his mission, Barry meets the Medellin Cartel - Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda), Carlos Lehder (Fredy Yate Escobar), and Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia). They want to get their drugs into the United States, but the runway for the planes is too risky for most pilots. Barry takes his plane for a ride and almost crashes into the trees but manages to pull up and continue his flight with ease and get back to the U.S. without getting in trouble. Barry now has the trust of the cartel. However, the DEA raid one of their compounds, and Barry is arrested. Schafer finds him in his cell and tells him that his house will get raided, and Lucy will most likely be brought in for questioning and be kept overnight. When Barry gets out, he goes home and urges Lucy and the kids to pack up their things so they can move. Despite Lucy's questioning, Barry insists he cannot tell her a thing, leading her to lose trust in him. The Seals move to Mena, AR. Barry is then given the assignment to move guns for the Contras, even being allowed to own his own airport and planes for the job. His first flight to meet with the Contras ends with them robbing his stuff instead of taking his guns. Barry calls Schafer to let him know that the Contras aren't interested in the guns. On his second trip, he meets with a cartel leader to negotiate sending the guns to the cartel instead. Barry brings guns to the cartel and ships their drugs to the U.S. and the Contras while trying his hardest to avoid being detected by the law. Barry gets four other men to help him on his trips when he realizes the workload is too much for one guy to pull off. They fly separate planes on their missions. Schafer then asks Barry to bring back some of the Contras to the U.S. for the CIA's newly-established training base. Upon arrival, however, some of the men run away. As Barry's business grows, he starts to contribute to the community and provide even more for his family while also shamelessly indulging in his wealth and setting up fronts to hide all the money. Eventually, the Seals are visited by Lucy's freeloading brother JB (Caleb Landry Jones), whom Barry is not fond of. When Lucy tells JB to get a job, Barry sets him up working at the airport. JB ends up taking some money that Barry was hiding in the hangar, using it to buy himself a new car and to pick up an underage girl. The DEA starts to go after the pilots. On one mission, Barry crash-lands and loses a significant portion of the drugs. Meanwhile, the cartel runs into trouble when Escobar declares war on the government, and the cartel gets kicked out of Colombia. Barry must meet with them to sort out the issues. At the same time, JB gets arrested by the sheriff after he is caught carrying a suitcase full of money. After bailing JB out, Barry drives him to a separate car so that he can leave and never return. JB curses Barry and drives away, only to be blown up by a car bomb. Barry gets rid of the car by dumping it in the woods. Barry and Schafer meet to discuss what's been going on. Schafer says the Contras left since they just weren't fighting. The CIA then starts to get rid of anything involving Barry. Barry attempts to move the stash of products out of the airport, but he is found by FBI, DEA, and other law enforcement agents, and he is arrested. Barry meets with a prosecutor, Dana Sibota (Jayma Mays), who is hellbent on getting Barry locked up. As he waits outside while she speaks to a lawyer on the phone, Barry tries to bribe the agents with caddies while also insisting he will walk away scot-free. Sibota comes out and confirms that Barry is free to go. Barry is given a task under Ronald Reagan's administration to gather dirt on the Sandinistas, all of whom are believed to be drug traffickers. They set up cameras in a plane for Barry to get photos as proof. Barry returns to meet with Ochoa and the rest of the Medellin Cartel. As he still has their trust, Barry engages in business with them, moving products into the plane where the photos are taken. The White House later releases the photos as propaganda, and Barry is seen in the photos. He is told that they were not supposed to be released to the public until after the cartel members were caught. The DEA go through Barry's house looking for evidence. Lucy takes the kids to Baton Rouge. Barry is convicted and is sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service. He moves from hotel to hotel each night. On one such night, he is approached in his car by hit-men sent by Escobar, and he is subsequently murdered. The final text states that "Schafer" got promoted after suggesting they get the Iranians to arm the Contras. One of Barry's guys went on to become a pastor in Alabama after he was set free. The rest of the pilots weren't seen after that. The CIA continued to use Barry's plane to arm the Contras until one of the planes was shot down over Nicaragua. The ensuing scandal was known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Lucy returned to Louisiana with the kids. The last thing we see is her working as a cashier at a coffee shop, still wearing a bracelet that Barry gave her.

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Film Review: ‘American Made’

Doug Liman's brash, busy CIA pilot adventure may be based on the life of Barry Seal, but it's most importantly a Tom Cruise star showcase.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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There’s a lot going on in “ American Made ,” a hectic, hyperactive true-life tall tale that jumbles Colombian drug-smuggling, CIA arms-trading, Midwestern fortune-making and a whole lot of very fancy flying. Yet the most salient image in the whole coked-up kaleidoscope is a simple one: Tom Cruise ‘s sunglasses. There may be significant stretches in Doug Liman ‘s film where the star, as TWA pilot turned all-sides-of-the-law hustler Barry Seal, isn’t wearing wire-rimmed aviator shades, yet somehow it feels as if they’re always there. An accessory that Cruise made wholly his own in “Top Gun,” they connote as much rakish bravado and slightly impenetrable machismo now as they did then — 1986, coincidentally the year that the action in “American Made,” which spans eight fast years of Carter-to-Reagan-era governmental skulduggery, comes to a startling head.

A sweat-slicked, exhausting but glibly entertaining escapade on its own terms, “American Made” is more interesting as a showcase for the dateless elasticity of Cruise’s star power. It feels, for better or worse, like a film he could have made at almost any point in the last 30 years: As Cruise’s character here puts his prodigious aviation skills to wildly irresponsible use, it’s tempting to imagine Liman’s film as an oblique spiritual follow-up to the adventures of flashy Navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, beating tardy forthcoming sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” to the punch. The films’ worlds might be very different, not least since “American Made” counts as fast-and-loose non-fiction, but Cruise’s presence across them, all Colgate grin and cock-of-the-walk swagger, is notably consistent. (Even period authenticity has no dominion over him: While his co-stars are slathered in late-1970s and ’80s kitsch, Cruise’s hair and costuming throughout can scarcely be linked to any milieu.)

It’s frankly a relief to see Cruise acting this assertively himself again (give or take a mild Louisiana drawl) after watching his leading-man persona anonymously shoehorned into the established franchise constraints of “The Mummy” earlier this summer. What the actual Barry Seal may have been like is almost impossible to glean from his performance; this is a star vehicle first and foremost, which makes the film’s balancing of fact and fancy even harder to parse. Gary Spinelli’s script follows in the recent tradition of “War Dogs,” “Gold” and “American Hustle” — all high-flown, fact-based tangles of individual and institutional corruption — by blatantly owning up to the absurdity of its real-life premise. “Shit gets really crazy from here,” Seal even admits in one of several grainy, after-the-fact camcorder confessionals, a somewhat clunky framing device the film uses in lieu of voiceover.

Things are already pretty chaotic to begin with, as the film opens with a standard-issue disco-era swirl of archive footage (including, cutely, a vintage Universal Pictures logo at the outset) and jaunty airborne antics. All set to Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” — kicking off a peppy jukebox soundtrack that later reaches its on-the-nose thematic apotheosis with Talking Heads’ “Slippery People” — this intro swiftly establishes Seal as a devil-may-care playboy in TWA uniform. The year is 1978 and Seal is bored of his domestic flight path, keeping himself amused with the odd bit of cigar smuggling and faked inflight turbulence. When he’s approached by CIA man Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson, laying on the alpha smarm) to fly undercover for them instead, skimming Central America to take surveillance photos, he’s only too quick to accept.

If Seal’s wife Lucy (Sarah Wright Olsen) and two children back in Baton Rouge are secondary considerations to him, the film treats them likewise: Doing her best with scant material from the script and wardrobe department alike, Wright Olsen is mostly limited to fretful chiding on the sidelines as her husband’s covert career veers off course. Which it does, in rapidly escalating but dizzyingly lucrative fashion: An illicit sideline in transporting cocaine from Colombia for the Medellín Cartel is soon co-opted by the CIA into a major gun-running racket, while Seal’s new home base in back-of-beyond Arkansas becomes a military training ground for the Contras.

To go by the film’s account, Seal simply winked and smiled his way into becoming a critical player in the Iran-Contra affair of the mid-1980s, and his blithe detachment from the political specifics of the scandal (he admits to an affection for Ronald Reagan, but principally on the basis of “Bedtime for Bonzo”) brings to mind a smoother-operating Forrest Gump. As major figures like Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega flit through the film in incidental cameos, Seal remains the mostly charmed, accidental center of it all.

Fusing the lickety-split comedy of his “Swingers” days with the more businesslike action smarts of his latter-day Hollywood works, Liman does his best to keep this top-heavy narrative in constant motion — without approaching the technical or structural inventiveness of his previous Cruise collaboration, 2014’s undervalued sci-fi mindbender “Edge of Tomorrow.” Enlisting “City of God” cinematographer César Charlone proves a canny move, as the Uruguayan’s roving, agitated camera style (not to mention a perspiring, overripe palette, heavy on hot yellows) implies antsy tension even in comparatively banal domestic scenes.

As storytelling, however, “American Made” is both so distracted and so distracting that there’s barely time to consider what it all adds up to. Beneath Cruise’s unruffled commandeering lies a messy array of secondary characters somewhat haphazardly chopped into proceedings by editor Andrew Mondshein. (Dylan Tichenor and Saar Klein are credited with additional cutting.) From Seal’s redneck brother-in-law (a typically slithering Caleb Landry Jones) to a suspicious local sheriff (Jesse Plemons, who seems to have suffered most in the edit), such figures add little color or credibility to the film’s comic-book reportage.

In the film’s press materials, Spinelli admits to being in thrall to Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas,” and the influence is particularly clear in a headlong final act that deals with the souring of Seal’s questionably achieved American dream. But “American Made” lacks the sense of moral reckoning and self-effacing human irony it needs to achieve the emotional payoff or tragicomic heft of “American Hustle,” let alone Scorsese’s masterwork. Based on a true story or otherwise, it winds up simply as another sharp, spit-shined Tom Cruise jet, and not a bad one at that: The genius of Cruise’s superstardom may be that he can make even the scuzziest American scoundrel seem, like Ethan Hunt or Maverick Mitchell, untouchably heroic. When those aviators are on, all bets are off.

Reviewed at Universal Pictures screening room, London, Aug. 16, 2017. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 114 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures, Cross Creek Pictures presentation in association with Imagine Entertainment of a Brian Grazer production in association with Quadrant Pictures, Vendian Entertainment, Hercules Film Fund. Producers: Doug Davison, Brian Grazer, Brian Oliver, Tyler Thompson, Kim Roth, Ray Angelic. Executive producers: Michael Bassick, Terry Dougas, Michael Finley, Paris Latsis, Brandt Andersen, Eric Greenfeld, Ray Chen.
• Crew: Director: Doug Liman. Screenplay: Gary Spinelli. Camera (color): César Charlone. Editor: Andrew Mondshein. Music: Christophe Beck.
• With: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright Olsen, Alejandro Edda, Caleb Landry Jones, Jayma Mays, Jesse Plemons, Lola Kirke.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, american made.

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The makers of the based-on-a-true-story black comedy "American Made" fail to satisfactorily answer one pressing question: why is CIA operative and Colombia drug-runner Barry Seal's story being told as a movie and not a book? What's being shown in this film that couldn't also be expressed in prose? 

In telling the true story of American airplane pilot Barry Seal ( Tom Cruise ), writer Gary Spinelli and director Doug Liman ("Edge of  Tomorrow ," " Jumper ") choose to overstimulate viewers rather than challenge them. They emphasize Barry's charm, the exotic nature of his South American trade routes, and the rapid escalation of events that ultimately led to his downfall. Cruise's smile is, in this context, deployed like a weapon in Liman and Spinelli's overwhelming charm offensive. You don't get a lot of psychological insight into Barry's character, or learn why he was so determined to make more money than he could spend, despite conflicting pressures from Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and the American government to either quit or collude.

But you do get a lot of shots of Cruise grinning from behind aviator glasses in extreme close-ups, many of which are lensed with hand-held digital cameras that show you the wilds of Nicaragua and Colombia through an Instagram-cheap green/yellow filter. "American Made" may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

The alarming pace of Barry's narrative, designed to put Cruise’s charisma front and center, keeps viewers disoriented. It's often hard to understand Barry's motives beyond caricature-broad assumptions about his (lack of) character. In 1977, Barry agrees to fly over South American countries and take photos of suspected communist groups using a spy plane provided by shadowy CIA pencil-pusher Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). Barry is impulsive, or so we're meant to think based on an incident where he wakes up a sleeping co-pilot by abruptly sending a commercial airliner into a nosedive. This scene may explain why Barry grins like a lunatic as he explains to his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) that he'll figure out a way to pay out of pocket for his family's health insurance once he opens an independent shipping company called "IAC" (Get it? IAC - CIA?).

Barry's impetuousness does not, however, explain why he flies so low to land when he takes his photographs. Or why he doesn't immediately reach out to Schafer when he's kidnapped and forced by Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and his Cartel associates to deliver hundreds of pounds of cocaine to the United States. Or why Barry thinks so little of his wife and kids that he packs their Louisiana house up one night without explanation, and moves them to a safe-house in Arkansas. There's character-defining insanity, and then there's "this barely makes sense in the moment when it is happening" crazy. Barry often appears to be the latter kind of nutbar.

There are two types of people in "American Made": the kind that work and the kind that get worked over. It's easy to tell the two apart based on how much screen-time Spinelli and Liman devote to each character. Schafer, for example, is defined by the taunts he suffers from a fellow cubicle drone and his own tendency to over-promise. Schafer doesn't do real work—not in the filmmakers' eyes. The same is true of Escobar and his fellow dealers, who are treated as lawless salesmen of an unsavory product. And don't get me started on JB ( Caleb Landry Jones ), Lucy's lazy, Gremlin-driving, under-age-girl-dating, Confederate-flag-waving redneck brother.

But what about Lucy? She keeps Barry's family together, but her feelings are often taken for granted, even when she calls Barry out for abandoning her suddenly in order to meet up with Schafer. Barry responds by throwing bundles of cash at his wife's feet. The argument, and the scene end just like that, like a smug joke whose punchline might as well be,  There's no problem that a ton of cash can't solve .

"American Made" sells a toxic, shallow, anti-American Dream bill of goods for anybody looking to shake their head about exceptionalism without seriously considering what conditions enable that mentality. Spinelli and Liman don't say anything except,  Look at how far a determined charmer can go if he's greedy and determined enough . They respect Barry too much to be thoughtfully critical of him. And they barely disguise their fascination with broad jokes that tease Barry's team of hard-working good ol' boys and put down everyone else.

Sure, it's important to note that Barry ultimately meets a just end, one that's been prescribed to thousands of other would-be movie gangsters. But you can easily shrug off a little finger-wagging at the end of a movie that treats you to two hours of Tom Cruise charming representatives of every imaginable US institution (they don't call in the Girl Scouts, the Golden Girls or the Hulk-busters, but I'm sure they're in a director's cut). If there is a reason, good or bad, that "American Made" is a movie, it's that you can't be seduced by the star of " Top Gun " in a book. 

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Film credits.

American Made (2017)

Rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.

115 minutes

Tom Cruise as Barry Seal

Domhnall Gleeson as Monty 'Schafer'

Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal

Jesse Plemons as Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones as JB

Lola Kirke as Judy Downing

Jayma Mays as Dana Sibota

• Gary Spinelli

Cinematographer

• César Charlone
• Andrew Mondshein
• Christophe Beck

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American Made review – maverick Tom Cruise feels the need for speed in flashy thriller

A grinning Cruise is back in Top Gun territory in Doug Liman’s sort-of-true story about a bored pilot who starts working for a Colombian cartel and the CIA

You’d need a heart of stone not to indulge Tom Cruise’s midlife return to Top Gun antics in this flashy, entertaining crime thriller by director Doug Liman, featuring Tom with blindingly toothy grin and sunglasses whizzing around in his light aircraft with US Customs agents riding his tail ( to quote Roger Avary ).

It’s based on the sort-of-true-ish story of a former TWA pilot who in 1984 was arrested for gun-running, money-laundering and carrying drugs in his plane for Colombia’s Medellín Cartel. He cut a deal to incriminate bigger players and claimed he had been involved with government intelligence agencies from the outset – this movie sportingly takes him at his word.

Cruise plays Barry Seal, competent but bored airline pilot and impeccable husband to super-hot wife Lucy (Sarah Wright). He is very excited to be approached by shadowy CIA man Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) and asked to fly a spy plane over Central America to photograph communist insurgents. His roistering antics catch the attention of Pablo Escobar’s drug barons who force him to fly their cocaine to the US. Then he is bullied by Schafer with a new plan: fly guns to Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels, the contras, who are actually more interested in selling the drugs that the Colombians had given them in exchange for these guns – a murky setup which the movie suggests laid the foundations for the Iran-Contra deal.

It’s a salacious war-story picture that leans heavily on the voiceover-flashback style pioneered in GoodFellas, and it reminded me a little of Ted Demme’s tiresome coke history Blow (2001), or more recently something like Todd Phillips’s War Dogs (2016). But the beamingly ingenuous Cruise, whose character is not burdened with any doubts or an inner life, somehow sells it to you.

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• The True Story Behind the Movie <em>American Made</em>

The True Story Behind the Movie American Made

American Made , the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. An FBI sting. Enough cold, hard cash to make the phenomenon of raining money a plausible ecological scenario. And a sex scene in the cockpit of a plane. That’s flying through the air. With one participant being the pilot. Did we mention it’s Tom Cruise?

If it sounds like an exercise in screenwriting excess, it’s not entirely — the film takes as its inspiration the true story of Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, a TWA pilot who became a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel and, later, an informant for the DEA. It’s an ideal vehicle for Cruise, a.k.a. Maverick , whose mischievous swagger is accented here (literally) with a Louisiana drawl.

The movie hardly purports to be a documentary — director Doug Liman, who reteams with Cruise after Edge of Tomorrow , has referred to it as “a fun lie based on a true story.” And perhaps its looseness with the facts is for the best, as conflicting accounts make it difficult to get a clear picture on certain aspects of Seal’s seemingly made-for-the-movies life. It’s a thorny story that takes place against the backdrop of the Reagan-era War on Drugs and the notorious Iran-Contra affair , with Seal never hesitating to do business with opposing sides, so long as the payout was prodigious.

Here’s what we know about Seal — and what’s still up for debate.

MORE: Review: American Made Lets a Smug Tom Cruise Just Be Tom Cruise

Fact: Seal was an unusually talented young pilot.

According to Smuggler’s End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal — written by retired FBI agent Del Hahn, who worked on the task force that went after Seal in the ’80s — Seal obtained his student pilot license at 15 and became fully licensed at 16. His instructor was so impressed by his natural talent that he allowed him to fly solo after only eight hours of training. After serving in the National Guard and Army Reserve, he became a pilot with TWA, among the youngest command pilots to operate a Boeing 707.

Fact: He had a colorful personality.

As Cruise plays him, Seal was a blend of balls and braggadocio, fond of stunts and rarely registering the possibilities of danger or failure. According to Hahn, Seal’s high school yearbook photo was accompanied by the inscription, “Full of fun, full of folly.” His flight instructor described him as wild and fearless and generally unconcerned with the consequences of his actions. In an interview with Vice , Hahn says Seal was personable but “not as smart and clever as he thought he was.”

Partly Fiction: He was married to a woman named Lucy and they had three kids.

Sarah Wright plays Seal’s delightfully foul-mouthed wife in the movie, alternately exasperated by his schemes and enthralled by the riches they bring. In reality, Seal was married three times and had five children. He had a son and daughter with first wife Barbara Bottoms, whom he married in 1963 and subsequently divorced. He then married Linda McGarrh Ross in 1971, divorcing a year later, before marrying Deborah Ann DuBois, with whom he would go on to have three children, in 1974.

Fiction: The government first took notice of his smuggling when he was transporting Cuban cigars.

While the film depicts Seal’s foray into smuggling as beginning with Cuban cigars, his first documented run-in with the law for a smuggling offense took place in 1972 when he was one of eight people arrested for a plot to smuggle explosives out of the U.S. Though he wasn’t convicted, he lost his job with TWA. By 1976, according to Hahn, he had moved onto marijuana, and within a couple of years graduated to cocaine, which was less bulky, less sniffable by dogs and generally more profitable.

Fact: He smuggled drugs in through the Louisiana coast.

Seal and the pilots he recruited — including one he met in jail and his first wife’s brother — trafficked drugs over the border of his home state. As in the movie, he sometimes delivered them by pushing packed duffel bags out of his plane and into the Atchafalaya basin, to be retrieved by partners on the ground.

Mostly Fiction: Seal was chummy with the leaders of Colombia’s Medellín Cartel, including Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers.

In the movie, Seal meets the cartel big wigs early on. In reality, Hahn writes, he did not deal with them directly, and they referred to him only as “El Gordo,” or “The Fat Man.” He finally met with them in April 1984 when he was working with the DEA on a sting operation intended to lead to their capture. (That operation would go awry when Seal’s status as an informant was revealed in a Washington Times cover story months later.)

Fact: Seal offered to cooperate with the DEA to stay out of prison.

The DEA was onto Seal for a long time before securing an indictment against him in March 1983 on several counts, including conspiracy to distribute methaqualone and possession with intent to distribute Quaaludes. As the movie suggests, there was some confusion among government agencies intent on taking him down.

His initial attempt to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, offering information on the Ochoa family, was rejected. But in March 1984, he traveled to Washington to the office of the Vice President’s Drug Task Force and cut a deal on the strength of his intel on and connections to the cartel.

Contested: He worked for many years alongside the CIA.

The film has Seal’s involvement with the CIA beginning in the late 1970s, relatively early on in his smuggling career. Under the handling of an agent played by Domhnall Gleeson, Cruise’s Seal gathers intelligence by flying low over Guatemala and Nicaragua and snapping photos from his plane. Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of arms to the Contras in Nicaragua, who the U.S. government was attempting to mobilize against the leftist Sandinistas, who controlled the government. The movie even suggests that the CIA helped set Seal up with his very own airport in the small town of Mena, Ark.

According to Hahn’s book, rumors of Seal’s involvement with the CIA anytime before 1984 were just that — rumors. The only confirmed connection between Seal and the CIA turned up by Hahn’s research was in 1984, after Seal had begun working as an informant for the DEA. The CIA placed a hidden camera in a cargo plane Seal flew to pick up a cocaine shipment in Colombia. He and his copilot were able to obtain photographs that proved a link between the Sandinistas and the cartel, key intelligence for the Reagan administration in its plans to help overthrow the Sandinistas’ regime. But the final piece of the operation — a celebration of the successful cocaine transport, at which the Ochoas and Escobar were to be arrested all at once — never happened because of the revelation of Seal’s status as an informant.

Fact: Seal was assassinated in 1986.

Jorge Ochoa reportedly ordered a hit on Seal early in 1986. At the time, Seal was living in a Baton Rouge Salvation Army facility. Charges against him had not been fully erased as a result of his cooperation with the government, and he was sentenced to probation and six months residing at the treatment center. On the evening of Feb. 19, just after he parked his Cadillac, he was killed by two Colombian hitmen armed with machine guns.

Thanks in part to several witnesses, both men and four additional men who conspired in the killing were arrested within two days. Seal would go down as a legendary criminal, one of the most important witnesses in DEA history and — in Hollywood’s estimation, at least — a classic American story fit for only our most American onscreen hero.

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‘American Made’ Review: Tom Cruise Grins His Way Through a Dark Comedy

Liman’s story about American amorality tries to work an underwhelming performance to his advantage.

As fun and as sharp as American Made can be, it’s also a bit depressing since you can’t help but feel like this was the opportunity for star Tom Cruise to return to the more nuanced performances he hasn’t shown us in over a decade. Cruise is a good actor, but it seemed like he made a decision in the late 2000s to only play likable characters, thus leaving behind more interesting roles like the ones he played in Magnolia , War of the Worlds , and Eyes Wide Shut . This renders Doug Liman ’s movie a bit of an oddity as Cruise grins and stunts his way through a film about a careless individual who only wants to feed his own ego and adrenaline. A more introspective performance could have made this one of the defining performances of Cruise’s career, but he seems fairly oblivious to the subtext of his character, so Liman tries to use this to his advantage, turning the story of smuggler Barry Seal into one of American excess and carelessness on the global stage.

Before he begins a life of espionage and crime, we don’t really learn much about TWA pilot Barry Seal (Cruise) other than his need for an exciting life, which is exactly what CIA agent “Schafer” ( Domhnall Gleeson ) offers when he gives Barry a plane and tells him to get shots of communist fighters in South America. Barry is only too happy to oblige, but finds that working for the CIA doesn’t pay too well. Fortunately for Barry, the growing Medellin cartel pays incredibly well, and they recruit the pilot to smuggle cocaine back to the U.S. From there, Barry becomes everyone’s smuggler, “the gringo who always delivers”, taking guns to the Contras in Nicaruaga, and taking drugs back into the U.S. Barry starts raking in the cash and stashing money all over the small town of Mena, Arkansas, but it only becomes a matter of time before all of his allies become enemies.

From a visual standpoint, American Made is arguably the most exciting film Liman has ever made. There’s a freewheeling use of the camera that’s not afraid of a zoom, a sun-drenched color palette, or an awkward angle as if the cameraman is just as loose as Barry. It gives American Made a vibrant, unhinged feeling that never feels self-conscious or contrived. The way Liman directs the movie, it’s as if Barry is moving full-speed ahead and we’re just trying to keep up, perfectly framed shots be damned. While previous films like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Jumper hinted at something more workmanlike, American Made is positively electric.

The stylized direction also fits nicely with Gary Spinelli ’s script, which comes off as a damning indictment of the U.S. couched in a fun story about a guy who went on lots of adventures and got rich doing it. It’s a surprising sneak attack, but it really shows the amorality of a country with far too much power and no idea how to use it. A straight retelling of the Iran-Contra scandal probably would have been incredibly dull, but through Barry, we can see the insanity of the U.S. backing rebels who don’t want to fight and then paying its top smuggler to basically bring drugs back into the country. If the movie wasn’t so damn funny and Cruise wasn’t so charming, American Made would probably leave you sick to your stomach.

But the weird thing about American Made is that it never wants you to feel bad at all. Imagine The Wolf of Wall Street with the edges sanded off and you have something approximating American Made . Jordan Belfort’s actions are just as damaging as Barry Seal’s, but whereas we’re meant to both enjoy and be repulsed by Jordan’s debauchery, Barry offers us all of the party with none of the hangover. Cruise, for whatever reason, doesn’t want us to dislike Barry, so the character becomes flat and lacks an arc. He never questions his actions, never questions U.S. policy, and is only too happy to become ridiculously rich off funding a failed war and a growing drug epidemic. For American Made , it’s the larger situation that’s crazy rather than Barry’s complicity and greed.

For a film that spans almost a decade and covers two major global events (Iran-Contra and Medellin), none of that gets on Barry. He’s a drug smuggler who doesn’t even do drugs, and while much has been made of a scene where Tom Cruise gets covered in cocaine and rides away on a bicycle, it’s a funny scene that lacks weight because Barry doesn’t change or grow. He’s a nice guy who’s also an adrenaline junkie, and he does terrible things, but the movie doesn’t want us to think he’s a terrible person. That makes for an odd mixture, but Liman tries to steer it to his advantage by making Barry a commentary on all of us. If we’re all out having fun, then we don’t need to think about the long-ranging consequences of our actions. Sure, Iran-Contra went horribly wrong, but we can all laugh about it now. What horrifying scandals today will we laugh about in thirty years?

Unfortunately, with Cruise at the center of American Made , the movie can never go quite as far as it needs to. It’s a movie made to thrill rather than unnerve, and that’s because at the end of the day, Cruise is still making movies where he needs to be liked. He can play a goofball or a guy who’s in over his head, but at the end of the day, when he flashes that million-dollar smile, he needs us to like him. For now, that’s all well and good, but I miss the days where I didn’t just like a Tom Cruise performance; I was impressed by it.