tom cruise drug trafficking

• Entertainment
• 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.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
• Biden’s Campaign Is In Trouble. Will the Turnaround Plan Work?
• Why We're Spending So Much Money Now
• The Financial Influencers Women Actually Want to Listen To
• Breaker Sunny Choi Is Heading to Paris
• Why TV Can’t Stop Making Silly Shows About Lady Journalists
• The Case for Wearing Shoes in the House
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Write to Eliza Berman at [email protected]

You May Also Like

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Barry Seal: The real-life story behind Tom Cruise's character in American Made

Doug liman’s new film follows the wild true story of a pilot, drug smuggler, and eventual informant, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey

Get our the life cinematic email for free, thanks for signing up to the the life cinematic email.

Hollywood screenwriters toil their lives away trying to come up with the next crazy, catchy story to pitch. Yet, sometimes, history does the work for them.

Tom Cruise ‘s latest vehicle American Made , directed by Doug Liman, sees the A-lister play the infamous Barry Seal: a pilot who became a drug smuggler, who in turn became an informant, finding himself at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Reagan’s era.

Seal’s love of flying blossomed early; he took his first solo flight at the age of 15, before gaining a pilot’s licence at 16, earning money by towing advertising banners. After serving in the Louisiana Army National Guard and Army Reserve, he joined Trans World Airlines in 1968 as a flight engineer, before becoming one of the youngest command pilots in the entire fleet.

• American Made is pure Tom Cruise, all while history takes a backseat

According to his wife Deborah Seal, he became involved in drug smuggling in 1975. During the early 1980s, he developed a close relationship with the Medellin Cartel, whose leadership included Pablo Escobar. It was then that he moved his operations from his home state of Louisiana to an airstrip in rural west Arkansas.

In 1983, however, Seal was caught in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as he tried to smuggle a shipment of Quaaludes into the country. By his own admission, he had by then flown more than 100 flights of 600 to 1200 pounds of cocaine each, equating to between $3bn and $5bn worth of drugs into the US.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Former FBI agent Del Hahn, however, describes how Seal was desperate to avoid jail time ; after his offer to turn snitch was turned down multiple times, he eventually flew straight to DC and the office of the vice president’s drug task force. They sent him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Seal was soon enlisted into a sting operation. The aim? The Reagan administration was keen to see the Contras militia overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government which had installed itself in Nicaragua; Seal claimed the Sandinistas had made a deal with the Medellin Cartel, and proof of such could lend justification to the US’s support of the Contras, despite accusations of human rights violations amongst the counter-revolutionaries.

And so, the pilot flew into an airstrip in Nicaragua with CIA cameras installed on his plane, snapping pictures which showed Escobar and several other members of the Medellin Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a plane with the aid of Sandinista soldiers.

Seal claimed that one of the men present, Federico Vaughan, was an associate of Tomas Borge of the interior ministry of Nicaragua. However, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny threw doubt over Seal’s accusations, claiming there was no evidence tying any Nicaraguan officials to the drug shipment.

Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days

New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled

Others, however, jumped on Seal’s testimony. And that would be his undoing. A front page story in The Washington Times by Edmond Jacoby about links between Sandinista officials and the Medellin Cartel discussed Seal’s mission and appeared to out him as a government agent.

The DEA cut him loose, but that also left him vulnerable. He was later arrested by the FBI in Louisiana, though only received six months supervised probation; a condition of his sentence was that he spend every night, from 6pm to 6am, at the Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge.

It was outside of this building that he was shot and killed on 19 February, 1986. A friend said of the incident, “I saw Barry get killed from the window of the Belmont hotel coffee shop. The killers were both out of the car, one on either side, but I only saw one shoot, cause Barry saw it coming and just put his head down on the steering column.”

Colombian assassins sent by the Medellin Cartel were apprehended trying to leave Louisiana soon after Seal’s murder. Three of the men were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, some believe the CIA was behind the killing.

After his death, Louisiana attorney general William Guste hand-delivered a letter to US Attorney General Edwin Meese in protest at the government’s failure to protect Seal. Though he called him a “heinous criminal”, Guste added: “At the same time, for his own purposes, he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and informant in the country’s fight against illegal drugs.”

“Barry Seal’s murder suggests the need for an in-depth but rapid investigation into a number of areas. Why was such an important witness not given protection whether he wanted it or not?” There’s still no real answer to this question today.

‘American Made’ hits UK cinemas 25 August

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

‘American Made’ Ending Explained: What Happened to Barry Seal?

What happens to Seal after he becomes an informant for the DEA?

The Big Picture

• American Made is a true story about Barry Seal, a commercial pilot who becomes involved with government agencies and drug cartels in the '70s and '80s.
• Tom Cruise delivers a wonderful performance in a movie that initially flew under the radar.
• The film tackles complex themes such as the Iran-Contra affair and the Sandanista government coup in Venezuela.

The 2017 Tom Cruise film American Made is an unlikely true story, to say the least. Cruise plays Barry Seal, a real-life commercial pilot who ends up being recruited by multiple government agencies to infiltrate the South American drug cartels in the late '70s into the early '80s. And his on-again, off-again Southern drawl aside, it's a wonderful performance from the Mission: Impossible star in a movie that flew under the radar upon its initial release. And because the events depicted in American Made are taken directly from a true story, it makes it an even more fascinating story of how a commercial airline pilot ended up dealing with the likes of Pablo Escobar and the dangerous Medellín drug cartel in Colombia. Let's break down an ending that gets a little convoluted as just about every United States agency is involved at some point along with tie-ins to some political events unfolding at the same time including the Iran-Contra affair and the Sandanista government coup in Venezuela.

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.

What Is 'American Made About'?

Directed by Doug Liman , American Made is the true story of Barry Seal who was a commercial pilot for TWA , a now-defunct airline, back in the late 70s when he was busted for smuggling illegal contraband into the United States aboard the jets he was flying. He is then given a choice to face jail time or become an informant for the CIA and Agent Monty Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). He chooses the latter and within just a few months finds himself as a contract CIA employee running guns for the US government and both trafficking and providing intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on the boon of illegal drugs flowing out of South America. He does this while trying to maintain a normal family life with his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) and a couple of kids living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's a harrowing tale of a man who risks his own life and his family to avoid the wrath of the government and the FBI. Given Cruise's fascination with flying in both the Top Gun movies and the Mission Impossible franchise, it turned out to be a perfect fit for the amateur aviator and ultimate thrill seeker .

How Long Had Barry Seal Worked For the CIA in 'American Made'?

Once Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, American involvement in Central and South America grew exponentially as Reagan had promised to take a more hard-line approach to calamitous regimes that were popping up throughout the more unstable countries of the region. Seal began smuggling small amounts of marijuana into the country dating back to 1976. By 1978, he graduated to importing large amounts of cocaine from countries like Ecuador and Honduras.

By the early '80s, Barry Seal was running large amounts of drugs for the infamous Medellín cartel and the most notorious drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar, from Colombia into the United States via the Gulf of Mexico. The DEA became aware of Seal's activity in 1981 and after several years of legal wrangling and indictments, Seal officially started contract work for the Central Intelligence Agency in 1983 until his death in February 1986 at just 46 years of age.

What Leads to Barry Seal's Demise in 'American Made'?

The final scenes in American Made are dedicated to a large cocaine haul that involved Pablo Escobar and several high-ranking members of his cartel. On what turns out to be Barry Seal's final run for the Medellín cartel, he agrees with his handler at the DEA, James Rangel ( Benito Martinez ) to install a hidden camera within the cargo of the fuselage of his plane. This camera captures Seal along with several Medellín lieutenants along with members of the controversial Venezuelan Sandanista government loading palettes of drugs into the plane. The pictures are supposed to be classified, but in the days that follow, they are aired when President Reagan goes on the air to expose what is happening in South America and Barry can be seen prominently in the photos. This is the beginning of the end for Barry as Escobar will surely be targeting him for betraying him which means certain death. He decides to stay away from his family so they won't be in danger when the retaliation comes.

Tom Cruise Made a Blink-and-You-Miss-It Cameo in a Brat Pack Western

Once Escobar knows that Barry has betrayed him and is working for the government, Barry is obviously concerned for his own well-being as Escobar has killed more important men than him for less. He goes into hiding moving from motel to motel on a daily basis to elude what he assumes are Medellín cartel members looking to assassinate him. He makes a series of video journal entries detailing some of his exploits as a sort of memoir. During this time, he is also serving a probation period of 6 months in Arkansas for being found in possession of a warehouse full of drugs and guns. So he spends half of the day in a halfway house and the other half hiding from Escobar's hitmen. Eventually, Barry's luck runs out, and while sitting outside the Arkansas halfway house one afternoon, two Medellín cartel assassins approach him as he is seated in his car and shoot him dead .

'American Made's Satirical CIA Ending and Final Shot Explained

After Barry's cover is blown when Reagan goes on TV and shows the photos of him engaged with the Medellín cartel and Sandanista regime, DEA agents celebrate with a toast of champagne while CIA Agent Monty Schafer frantically walks through the office telling his employees to get rid of anything and everything that has Barry Seal's name on it. They need to erase Barry from ever being involved with any CIA activity. In a tongue-in-cheek final line, Shafer has an epiphany and decides that they will say that the Iranians sold arm the Contras to explain away their involvement with Barry who had also been running guns down to the Contras who were fighting the oppressive and illegitimate Sandinista government in Venezuela. As he posits this idea to a colleague there is a caption below him that reads, "Schafer got a promotion."

This was what started the infamous Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s that brought down Colonel Oliver North . There is also a sequence that describes how, even after Barry's assassination, the CIA continued to use his plane to run guns to the Contras in Venezuela until it was shot down over Nicaragua. The last scene of American Made shows Lucy back behind the counter of a fast food restaurant working the cash register showing that he has come full circle on her wild ride with Barry. Doug Liman emphasizes the final shot of the nice bracelet on her wrist as she extends her arm to give a customer their order. One final ode to the wild ride that was the life of Barry Seal.

American Made is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Amazon Prime

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

Farcical and madcap, 'american made' stars tom cruise at his best.

David Edelstein

Cruise plays a drug-smuggling pilot working for the DEA, CIA and Medellin Cartel in his new film, a dark comedy set in the '80s. Critic David Edelstein calls American Made "breathlessly entertaining."

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The new dark comedy "American Made" was inspired by the life of Barry Seal, who in the early 1980s helped arm the Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras, allegedly under the CIA's direction. Seal is played by Tom Cruise. The film is directed by Doug Liman, who also directed Cruise in the time-travel thriller "Edge Of Tomorrow." Film critic David Edelstein has this review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: So many movies have gotten so wrong what "American Made" gets so right that I could hardly believe what I was watching. It's a madcap farcical black comedy in which government agencies work at crazed cross-purposes so that ideology and business and propaganda are always colliding. And it's probably the best vehicle Tom Cruise has ever had. He plays a Louisiana-born drug smuggling pilot named Barry Seal who really lived and did much of the stuff in the film, though not in quite this way.

The role has been sweetened to fit the star, who thrives on playing amoral, buoyant, super-smooth characters, men who groove on speed and mastery and always have a ready smile. Think "Risky Business" and "The Color Of Money" and "Jerry Maguire." When the movie begins in the late '70s, Seal is flying for TWA and making money smuggling Cuban cigars. Into his life comes a redheaded bearded guy who calls himself Schafer played by Domhnall Gleeson. Schafer says he knows about the cigars but isn't there to arrest him. Instead, he takes Seal to see a beautiful little flying machine equipped with all sorts of surveillance cameras.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AMERICAN MADE")

TOM CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) CIA owns this?

DOMHNALL GLEESON: (As Schafer) No, no, Independent Aviation Consultants.

CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) IAC?

GLEESON: (As Schafer) Yeah. You run the company. But after hours, you work for us.

CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) It takes pictures?

GLEESON: (As Schafer) The work is covert.

CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) Covert?

GLEESON: (As Schafer) So anyone finds out about it - family, friends, even Lucy - it's Lucy, right?

CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) Yeah, that's right.

GLEESON: (As Schafer) That would be a problem.

CRUISE: (As Barry Seal) All this is legal?

GLEESON: (As Schafer) If you're doing it for the good guys, yeah. Just don't get caught (laughter).

EDELSTEIN: Domhnall Gleeson's face is chilling when he says, that'll be a problem, so deadpan but with so much menace. Why does Barry Seal go along? The Lucy mentioned is his wife. He has two kids and another on the way. Now he can do daredevil reconnaissance over El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, and the CIA will make him rich.

Well, he does get rich. But the money doesn't come from the CIA. It's from the Medellin cocaine cartel. The convolutions in "American Made" are incredible, literally, but probably true. I say probably because we'll never know the whole story. We might have if Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had finished his investigation of what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. But that was aborted when, in 1992, the first President Bush pardoned former members of his administration who knew the inner workings.

The Contras are all over "American Made" and portrayed as stumble bums. At the CIA's bequest, Seal flies them guns then bring some of them back to train in Arizona, where the agency has set him up with thousands of acres of land and even his own airport. Meanwhile - I told you it's convoluted - he's making tens of millions moving cocaine into the States under the DEA's nose.

CIA, DEA, ATF - all the acronyms get involved. In the middle of it all, comes Nancy Reagan's Just Say No To Drugs address and the DEA goes into overdrive. How does the audience view Seal's enterprising behavior? With elation. He's the film's wry narrator.

And Director Doug Liman does a beautiful job sinking "American Made" to Cruise's bopping air guitar rhythms. The handheld camera can barely keep up with Seal. He's complicit but innocent. That is, not killing anyone personally. He's helping his government and making his handsome self and pretty wife rich with money falling out of drawers.

I went to a promotional screening where the audience was so on his side that some people cheered when a harmless idiot who threatened to blackmail Seal got blown up by a car bomb. Gary Spinelli's script leaves much of Seal's life out, especially his connection to anti-communist groups which would put an ideological spin on his arming of the Contras.

But on its own terms, "American Made" is breathlessly entertaining - a fantasy of wealth and macho heroics that ends up going very bad. The supporting cast is fine, especially twitchy ginger-haired Caleb Landry Jones as Lucy's slacker brother. But of course, Cruise owns it. Sure, he overworks his features to suggest thinking along with that adorably abash trademark smile. But this movie is right in his sweet spot - the place where a go-getter goes for it and is suddenly so vulnerable, it breaks your heart.

GROSS: David Edelstein is film critic for New York magazine and its culture website Vulture. If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interview with David Litt whose new memoir is about writing speeches and jokes for President Obama or our interview with David Simon and George Pelecanos about creating the new HBO series "The Deuce," check out our podcast. We have lots of interviews to choose from.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANAT COHEN TENTET'S "OH, BABY")

GROSS: FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer is Roberta Shorrock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Mooj Zadie and Thea Chaloner. Therese Madden directed today's show. I'm Terry Gross.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Tom Cruise Crash Lands in ‘American Made’ Trailer (Watch)

By Dave McNary

Dave McNary

Film Reporter

• Adele Lim Directing Ashley Park in Untitled R-Rated Comedy for Lionsgate, Point Grey (EXCLUSIVE) 3 years ago
• Netflix Delaying ‘The Gray Man’ Production Amid Surging California COVID-19 Cases 3 years ago
• Millie Bobby Brown to Star in the Russo Brothers’ Sci-Fi Film ‘The Electric State’ 3 years ago

Tom Cruise combines piloting skills and charm in the first trailer for Universal’s drug-running drama “ American Made ” as he crash lands a small plane full of cocaine in a suburban neighborhood.

After he gets out of the plane, covered in cocaine, he flashes the usual dazzling Cruise grin and begins handing out cash to youngsters and saying, “You never saw me.”

In the film, Cruise portrays 1980s pilot and hustler Barry Seal. “I was running drugs for the CIA, the DEA and Pablo Escobar,” he says in a voiceover.

The film made headlines two years ago when a plane carrying crew members crashed on the set in Colombia in September 2015 , killing two people and seriously injuring a third person. Local authorities believe that bad weather caused the twin-engine Aerostar to crash.

Cruise was in production on the movie at the time of the incident, but was not on the plane. Universal decided last August to change the title from “ Mena ” to “ American Made ,” and move it from Jan. 6, 2017, to Sept. 29, 2017.

“American Made” is the latest collaboration between Cruise and director Doug Liman , following their collaboration on “Edge of Tomorrow.” The crime thriller also features Domhnall Gleeson, Lola Kirke, Jesse Plemons, Jayma Mays, Sarah Wright Olsen and Caleb Landry Jones.

See the trailer for “American Made” below:

More From Our Brands

On fiji’s vomo island, warm vibes precede a slice of local life (and luxury), joseph eichler’s personal silicon valley home is up for grabs at $6.4 million, acc to earn the most of any conference from march madness, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, parish premiere: giancarlo esposito exercises his demons for a story he ‘needed to tell’, verify it's you, please log in.

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

American Made Is the Best Tom Cruise Has Been in Years

It’s at least 15 minutes till American Made reveals its framing device, a cruddy VHS home-video recording circa 1985 of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) sweatily recounting his story in a still-bemused, “you’re not going to believe this shit” confessional style. These updates continue, accompanied by rushed, handwritten intertitles (“TWA ’78,” “DEA ’83”) as Barry takes us through his improbable tale of arms dealing, drug trafficking, and money laundering at the behest of the U.S. government during the Reagan administration’s covert funding of the Nicaraguan Contras.

But when an actor like Cruise tells us things are about to get crazy, we lean forward in our seats instinctively. No matter how corrupt and unconscionable the mess Barry finds himself in, he’s either clueless or amoral enough to summon a convivial outlook on it all. As the film nears its inevitable conclusion, Barry tries to sum up what he’s learned. He cocks his chin and looks down the barrel of the lens. “You try telling me this isn’t the greatest country in the…” Before he can finish that thought, the tape degrades into nothingness. At my screening, you could hear a pin drop.

If you’re the type of viewer who thought Wolf of Wall Street ’s failing was that it looked too cool, American Made is for you. It’s the grubbiest, greasiest vision of bad boys gettin’ away with it in recent memory, a glass of sour milk specifically timed to curdle just at the moment you think it might be harmless. Doug Liman’s direction is jarring and oftentimes downright ugly; sometimes it feels like a miracle that César Charlone’s camera lands on the actors at all. But boy, does it move. Perhaps improbably, especially for a film starring a man who’s still one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, if not the biggest, it bears more resemblance to Liman’s scrappy 1999 debut Go than anything he’s made this century.

The film is based on the true story of Seal, a TWA pilot who is recruited to take aerial photographs of Sandinista bases by CIA agent Monty Schafer. Schafer, played with gleeful sliminess by Domhnall Gleeson, is the quintessential Cruise foil, a paper-pusher in a slick suit who is too cowardly to get his own hands dirty. The difference here is that Barry matches Monty for slime, pound for pound — he’s got little in the way of a conscience, already having a side hustle going smuggling Cuban cigars from Canada. He takes the assignment, which he’s so good at that he soon becomes a liaison between the agency and General Noriega, flying down large sums of cash in exchange for intel. During one of these missions, he’s intercepted by Pablo Escobar’s cartel, and soon begins trafficking cocaine on the side, because hey, when in Panama. Basically, he’s either the best or worst multitasker ever.

The CIA, as personified by Gleeson, begins heaping bigger and more dangerous jobs on him, and Seal, not wanting or knowing how to say no, goes along with all of it. It eventually necessitates moving him and his family to a small town in Arkansas, where he’s given 2,000 acres to run what has now become a gun-running, drug-smuggling, Contra-training operation. His pretty blonde wife (Sarah Wright) does what all wives of men with lucrative extralegal professions do: pout and protest and then enjoy the mountains of cash with gusto.

I’ve read some critics say that Cruise, who is now 55 years old, needs to plot a career strategy to gracefully age out of these sorts of brash, action-oriented roles. But his strangely aging visage is as compelling as ever; at times it looks as if he’s being physically dragged toward his 60s against his will. It serves the film well, despite the fact that Seal himself was at least a decade younger throughout most of the events that inspired American Made. As played by Cruise, Barry is a man who ardently doesn’t want to grow up, and happens to be slick and charismatic enough to stave it off longer than most. Liman is attuned to this frequency of Cruise’s better than most directors, having found a similar manic note for him in the excellent Edge of Tomorrow. And American Made, which is consistently better than it has to be despite still hitting the occasional cliché pothole, is the best Cruise has been in years.

• vulture homepage lede
• movie review
• american made

Most Viewed Stories

• What’s Next for 3 Body Problem ?
• Saturday Night Live Recap: Ramy Youssef Makes it Personal
• Cinematrix No. 25: March 29, 2024
• A Guide to the Many Lawsuits Against Diddy
• 3 Body Problem ’s Imagination Problem
• Cassie’s Lawsuit Against Diddy, Explained
• Jolenes, Ranked

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

• Entertainment
• Celebrities
• Ticket Sales
• Promoted: What to Watch on Prime Video

Recommended

The crazy real-life drug smuggler behind ‘american made’.

• View Author Archive
• Email the Author
• Follow on Twitter
• Get author RSS feed

Contact The Author

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

If you happened to be traveling along a swampy, mosquito-infested route between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La., back in the freewheeling 1980s, you may have witnessed an unusual occurrence: a half-dozen or so military duffle bags, each stuffed with 110 pounds of pure cocaine, plummeting from the sky.

The man behind the drop was Barry Seal, who pushed them through a secret hatch in the floor of his airplane, installed there for precisely this purpose. One of the drug world’s most daring and ingenious smugglers, Seal was an action junkie who flew low and used Gulf of Mexico oil platforms to hide his presence. Associates, stationed below, retrieved the bags, each containing more than $1 million worth of product.

Colombian drug kingpins knew the burly, middle-aged pilot as El Gordo: “The Fat Man.” American drug distributors valued him as their version of Fed Ex. DEA agents regarded Seal as a man who needed to be turned and used to fight the drug war.

His story — which brims with conspiracy theories that range from him having dealings with a pre-assassination Lee Harvey Oswald to his functioning as a teenage gunrunner — inspired the movie “American Made,” out Friday . Tom Cruise plays the smuggler with the cocky swagger that endeared Seal to some — and might have heralded his undoing.

“He bragged to other pilots about having earned millions,” “American Made” screenwriter Gary Spinelli told The Post. “I don’t think he helped himself by rubbing people’s noses in it.”

Del Hahn — a former FBI agent who tracked Seal, interrogated him and later wrote about the man in the 2016 book “ Smuggler’s End ” (Pelican Publishing) — remembered what Seal did upon recognizing an FBI surveillance plane that had been following him. “He ran out onto his driveway and started shaking a towel at us,” Hahn said. The move cheekily signaled the law enforcers that they had been made.

From 1975 until the early 1980s, Seal became one of the narco-world’s go-to smugglers. He was honest, adept and innovative. Plus he didn’t do drugs or drink. By all indications, Seal was in it for adventure and challenge — all of which got amped up in 1984, when he became what NBC News called “one of the most daring and important government operatives.”

Born Adler Berriman Seal, the future smuggler grew up in Baton Rouge, La. Naturally drawn to aviation, he hung out at the local airport and secured a student pilot’s license at age 15. As a teenager, according to Spinelli, Seal impressed a girl by landing a plane on the 50-yard line of their high school’s football field before asking her out on a date. He dropped out of college, married his first wife in 1963 and got hired by TWA in ’67. The initial marriage ended in divorce; he married two more times and fathered four children.

Seal’s transformation to criminal flyboy began in 1972, after the then-33-year-old command pilot went on medical leave from TWA due to a shoulder injury.

During a time when pilots at loose ends were a rarity, a friend of Seal’s by the name of Joe Mazzuka (who, in turn, was acquainted with mob-tied Murray Kessler) recruited the injured Seal to fly explosives to Cuba. Seal justified his actions to himself by believing he was delivering them to forces plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro. The plan, however, turned out to be a sting operation, aimed at an accomplice. Seal, Mazzuka and six others were busted. But when it came time for the trial, in 1974, key prosecution witnesses were unavailable and the judge declared a mistrial.

‘He bragged to other pilots about having earned millions. I don’t think he helped himself by rubbing people’s noses in it.’  - Gary Spinelli

Nevertheless, Seal lost his TWA job. So, using underground connections and possibly seeking work in Mexico, he turned to smuggling weed, then pills, then cocaine, favoring his souped-up twin-engine Piper Navajo for the jobs that had him flying in and out of discreet airstrips in Louisiana and Arkansas.

“He was so good at getting product back and forth,” said Evan Wright, author of “American Desperado,” a book focused on the ’80s drug trade. “He understood fueling, distances, how to hide on the Louisiana coast.”

His finances became so robust that, as depicted in “American Made,” a bank in Mena, Ark., turned an entire vault over to Seal and built a smaller one for other customers to share. Spinelli describes Seal as having “half a football field’s worth of cash — and each bill was a crime.”

While it’s unclear how much he made, in 1986 Seal boasted about having brought 20,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States. Considering that he received $2,700 per pound smuggled, he would have earned $54 million (worth at least $126 million in 2017 valuations). Spinelli said Seal blew money on jewelry for his wife. Hahn reported that he spent cash on aircraft and possessed two boats.

However, Seal hardly came off as a kingpin. “Barry Seal was a nerd. He loved planes — and as long as he had one to play with, he was happy,” said Wright. But he wasn’t exactly careful. “He was a loudmouth and drove a ridiculously showy Cadillac convertible. He liked being a big man,” Wright added. He even trained his former brother-in-law, William Bottoms, to fly in blow while Seal guided him via radio.

If Seal truly was in it for the adventure, he got what he wanted: jailtime in Honduras, a plane shot down over Nicaragua with him in the pilot’s seat and a crash in Colombia out of which he managed to escape uninjured. But in 1983, when Seal got busted by the DEA with a reported 200,000 counterfeit Quaaludes that he had transported into Fort Lauderdale, things turned serious.

To avoid 10 years in prison, he became a DEA snitch — procuring evidence against major Central American players including Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar.

For risk-loving Seal, the arrangement proved cozy. He transported at least one 1,400-pound load for the DEA. Additionally, he may have quietly smuggled plenty more while working as an informant — and it appears to have gone beyond drugs.

In the book “ American Desperado ,” Jon Roberts, a now-deceased narcotics trafficker originally from New York City, recalled how “The one time I flew with him [Seal] to Nicaragua [transporting guns, supposedly on behalf of the CIA, in 1983 or 1984], I had told him I was uptight. Barry said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re working for Vice President Bush.’” (The CIA has denied any connections with Seal.)

On June 26, 1984, Seal embarked on an undercover trip that would have him bringing 1,465 pounds of cocaine from Nicaragua to the US Air Force base in Homestead, Fla. He somehow convinced Escobar to be on an airstrip and to help Sandinistas load drugs onto the plane. Via hidden camera, Seal and his co-pilot snapped them in the act.

But somehow, Seal wound up in the shots — and in the news. A July 17, 1984, story on the front page of the Washington Times, leaked to reporter Edmond Jacoby, exposed Seal without naming him. Two days later, a similar article appeared in the New York Times, detailing the amount of cocaine that Seal had smuggled in from Nicaragua. It named Nicaraguan officials as well as Escobar and Ochoa as collaborators.

“He knew he was screwed,” said Spinelli. “But Barry turned down witness protection because he was told that he could never again fly a plane. That would have been worse than death.”

Or maybe not. In 1986 — the same year the IRS concluded that he owed $29 million in taxes and placed a federal lien on him — Seal, who was slated to testify in court against Ochoa, was gunned down behind the wheel of his Cadillac. It transpired in the parking lot of a Baton Rouge Salvation Army halfway house, where he was staying as a condition of probation for a money laundering and cocaine possession plea agreement that dated back to 1984. The shooters were a pair of Medellin Cartel hitmen, sent from Colombia to show what happens to rats. An eyewitness spotted the getaway car. Before they could leave the United States, both killers were in police custody.

A lightning rod for conspiracy theories to the end, after his shooting Seal left behind a whopper. “Supposedly,” said Spinelli, “he died with George Bush’s phone number in his briefcase.”

Share this article:

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘American Made’ Trailer: Tom Cruise is a Drug Smuggler Turned CIA Informant in Wild True Story

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

Before Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman get to work on the much anticipated “Edge of Tomorrow” sequel, the duo will bring one of the CIA’s most infamous true stories to the big screen this fall. “ American Made ” stars Cruise as Barry Seal, an airline pilot turned drug smuggler turned CIA informant who worked with the Medellin Cartel and was assassinated at age 46. It’s not going to have the alien combat of “Edge of Tomorrow,” but it’s surely going to be just as wild.

READ MORE: Doug Liman Has a Title In Mind For An ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ Sequel, And It’s Not ‘Edge of Tomorrow 2’

“American Made” marks Liman’s return to Universal Pictures for the first time since “The Bourne Identity.” Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are producing through their Imagine Entertainment banner, while Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Jayma Mays, Jesse Plemons and Lola Kirke are staring in supporting roles.

The movie finds cruise returning to adult-oriented drama for the first time in almost a decade. Aside from the 2012 musical “Rock of Ages,” Cruise has spent the last several years strictly starring in big-budget action blockbusters, including “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Oblivion” and the “Jack Reacher” and “Mission: Impossible” franchises. He’s front and center in “The Mummy” reboot, which opens in theaters Friday and is the first installment in Universal’s new monster movie universe.

“American Made” opens in theaters September 29. Watch the first trailer below.

Stay on top of the latest film and TV news! Sign up for our email newsletters here.

Most Popular

You may also like.

True story behind Tom Cruise's American Made - the real-life and cartel murder of drug smuggler Barry Seal

The true story treads murkier waters than Tom Cruise's film

• 12:59, 18 Dec 2017
• Updated 13:56, 24 Jul 2018

Hollywood screenwriters spend their days wiling away, imagining up their next story, but often the best movies come from real-life.

And, that's the case in Tom Cruise's latest film American Made, as it delves into the true story of Barry Seal, pilot-cum-drug smuggler, turned informant.

"You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. "Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry."

In the trailer Tom Cruise as Seal tells us that only "some of this sh*t really happened" and Liman best summarised the movie as "a fun lie based on a true story." So what really happened?

How did he become a smuggler?

The real Barry Seal found himself at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Regan's era.

Seal had always loved flying, it was a passion that began early on in life. He took his first flight aged 15, gaining his licence at 16. No small feat. He also went on to earn money towing advertising banners across the skies. He was an entrepreneurial go-getter.

He went on to serve in the Louisiana Army National Guard and Army Reserve, then Trans World Airlines in 1968. Seal was a flight engineer - and went on to become one of the youngest command pilots in the entire fleet at 26-years-old.

So how does a pilot of such high-esteem go on to become a smuggler?

His wife Debbie Seal (not Lucy as she's named in the movie) confessed he became a drug smuggler in 1975, though she denied she knew it at the time.

It was in the 80s that Seal apparently developed a close relationship with the Medellin Cartel. The cartel included Pablo Escobar .

He moved his operations from his home state of Louisiana to Arkansas, using an airstrip in the rural west.

Skip ahead to 1983, and Seal was caught in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when he smuggled a shipment of Quaaludes into the country.

Desperate to avoid jail

He's admitted by this point he'd already flown more than 100 flights of 600 to 1200 pounds of cocaine each. That's $3bn to $5bn worth of drugs all taken into the US.

Seal was sentenced to ten years in prison for the crime, though he had tried to avoid jail time. Former FBI agent Del Hahn, speaking to VICE , said Seal was desperate to avoid jail time, but his offer to turn snitch was turned down - multiple times.

Instead Seal flew to Washington and the office of the Vice-President's drug task force directly, where he was sent to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He was taken on for sting ops.

Seal's bold claims - and how they were torn apart

The US - or at least the Reagan administration - was very keen to see the Contras militia overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government.

Seal claimed the Sandinistas had made a deal with the Medellin Cartel. With proof of such a deal it could lend justification to US support of the Contras, despite accusations of human rights violations amongst the counter-revolutionaries.

The pilot flew into Nicaragua with CIA cameras on his plane, taking photos showing Escobar and several other members of the Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a plane with Sandinista soldiers.

Seal claimed Federico Vaughan was present and was an associate of Tomas Borge of the interior ministry of Nicaragua.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny soon brought Seal's claims into doubt, claiming there was no evidence tying the two together.

He wasn't the only one. The Washington Times ran a front page story about links between Sadinista officials and the cartel. It discussed the mission and seemingly outed him as an agent.

How was Seal killed?

The DEA was at risk, and cut Barry lose. He was arrested by the FBI who gave him a mere six months supervised probation - on the condition that he spent every night from 6pm to 6am at the Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge.

It was here that he met his end, shot down and killed in February 1986.

“I saw Barry get killed from the window of the Belmont hotel coffee shop," said a friend. "The killers were both out of the car, one on either side, but I only saw one shoot, 'cause Barry saw it coming and just put his head down on the steering column.”

Seal arrived that evening at about 6pm and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. He was unaware that a Colombian assassin was hiding behind one of the donation drop boxes.

As Seal opened the driver's side door to get out of the car, the gunman rushed from behind the drop box and fired a .45 calibre Mac-10 machine gun, hitting Seal in the head and body several times.

Colombian assassins sent by the cartel were apprehended as they tried to escape Louisiana.

Three were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. There are still theories that the CIA was behind the shooting, though there's no proof.

The failure to protect

Louisiana Attorney General William Guste hand-delivered a letter to US Attorney General Edwin Meese in protest at the government’s failure to protect Seal.

While he called him a “heinous criminal” he went on to say: “at the same time, for his own purposes, he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and informant in the country’s fight against illegal drugs.

“Barry Seal’s murder suggests the need for an in-depth but rapid investigation into a number of areas. Why was such an important witness not given protection whether he wanted it or not?”

There is no answer.

Tom Cruise's movie and how it's different

Of course, this isn't quite how Tom Cruise's character is recruited in the movie. Cruise's bored commercial pilot performs daring stunts that draws the attention of the CIA rather than committing illegal acts.

Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us," but the simple interaction never happened.

The real Barry Seal claimed he had been working for agencies as early as the 50s while in the Civil Air Patrol. He was fired from Trans World Airlines in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons.

Many say the CIA turned a blind eye to Seal's drug smuggling as he became useful smuggling weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels. It appears Seal flew weapons there and then brought drugs back.

It's a real possibility - and what the movie suggests.

It's also possible that Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s is fictional, surrounded by misinformation. We at least know his exploits with the CIA and Monty Schafer are mostly fictional and based off speculation.

Hero or smuggler?

In the film Cruise is made an offer he can't refuse after he was kidnapped while refueling his plane, while in real life Seal had a choice and he started smuggling way before the movie suggests.

In fact, his first encounter with the Medellín Cartel happened less dramatically. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medellín Cartel.

The only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA.

What is certain is that Barry Seal did work for Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas as a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel and single-handedly had one of the largest impacts on the cocaine epidemic in the US in the early 1980s.

Seal made about $60m from smuggling drugs - becoming one of the richest people in America.

While Cruise's character executing missions for the government adds a sort of patriotism to it all, in real life Seal was first and foremost a drug smuggler.

American Made is out now on digital, 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, and DVD on December 26.

Flight Training London is a UK based, CAA approved, professional and safe flying school based at London Elstree Aerodrome, the closest aerodrome to Central and North London.

MORE ON Domhnall Gleeson Pablo Escobar Tom Cruise Doug Liman Central Intelligence Agency Washington Times Civil Air Patrol Salvation Army Army Reserve Trans World Airlines

Get email updates with the day's biggest stories.

Screen Rant

What happened to the real jorge ochoa after american made.

Alejandro Edda portrayed Jorge Ochoa, a Colombian drug trafficker, in the 2017 movie American Made. What happened to Ochoa in real life?

• American Made focuses on the story of Barry Seal and his connection to the Medellín Cartel, including drug trafficker Jorge Ochoa.
• The film does not show what happened to Medellín Cartel members like Jorge Ochoa after Seal's assassination.
• Jorge Ochoa faced legal trouble but managed to avoid extradition to the US and eventually surrendered to Colombian authorities, serving a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

American Made tells the true story of Barry Seal, a pilot, and his connection to Jorge Ochoa, a Colombian drug trafficker with the Medellín Cartel, in the late 1970s and 1980s. Alejandro Edda played Jorge in the 2017 action comedy film, which mainly highlighted the crimes and actions of Seal (who was portrayed by Tom Cruise). But the movie also featured the infamous cartel. Aside from Jorge and his numerous family members, Pablo Escobar was also involved with the Medellín Cartel, seeing as he founded it and was the head of the organization.

Since American Made mainly focused on Seal's story, the film did not explain what happened to the cartel members, including Jorge, following Seal's assassination. Seal was first a pilot with the Trans World Airlines (TWA) before he began smuggling drugs into the United States for the Medellín Cartel. He was later arrested for his crimes and made a deal with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to become an informant and lessen his sentence. However, the cartel killed Seal, and the government tried to cover up the scandal. While this whole ordeal was happening in the United States, Jorge Ochoa faced his own problems.

Jorge Ochoa Was Accused & Arrested For Crimes In 1986 & 1987 But Was Released

Following Seal's death, as depicted at the end of American Made , Jorge Ochoa ran into a lot of legal trouble. In November 1986, a grand jury in Miami accused Jorge of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine. The United States tried to get Colombia to extradite the Colombian drug trafficker, but Jorge soon disappeared and went into hiding. A year later, Jorge was arrested in Colombia on bull smuggling charges. However, given his and the Medellín Cartel's influence in the country, they were able to threaten Colombian officials with death if Jorge was extradited to the United States. He was soon released from prison, and the charges were dropped.

American Made: What Happened To Barry Seal’s Wife In Real Life

Jorge ochoa surrendered to colombian police in 1991 & served 5 years in prison.

Jorge Ochoa's luck would soon run out, and he had to face punishment for his drug trafficking crimes in the 1990s. According to Forbes , Jorge and his brothers — Fabio and Juan David — turned themselves into the Colombian authorities in early 1991 in relation to their drug smuggling schemes. The president at the time, César Gaviria Trujillo, offered all drug traffickers in Colombia reduced sentences if they agreed to surrender to the police. Jorge ultimately only served a five-and-a-half-year sentence in prison before he was released in July 1996. As of the writing of this American Made article, Jorge is still alive today and resides in Medellín, Colombia.

Source: Forbes

American Made Review: Tom Cruise Goes Wild as a Cocaine Cowboy

American Made reunites Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman for a breezy quasi-true story of arms and drug trafficking in the early 80s.

Tom Cruise and Doug Liman are back with another winner. American Made is a breezy, highly entertaining, quasi-true story of arms and drug trafficking in the early eighties. The film is contextually different from their previous effort, sci-fi hit Edge of Tomorrow ; but it shares the winsome traits that make Liman's work so enjoyable. American Made 's slick cinematography and editing hearken back to Liman's Swingers and Go days. The film does lack depth given the severity of the subject matter. There could also have been more meat for the supporting characters. Cruise is center stage throughout, a cocaine cowboy that certainly got in too deep.

American Made is the wild story of Barry Seal ( Tom Cruise ). A TWA pilot in the late seventies, Seal pops up on the CIA's radar with his minor smuggling activities. Bored with commercial aviation and an inherent thrill seeker, Seal is convinced to run clandestine reconnaissance flights through communist Central America. His activities attract the attention of the newly formed Medellin Cartel in Colombia. Everyone partners up in a highly lucrative, but illegal trafficking scheme. Seal rakes in millions, until the Iran-Contra Scandal rocks the country.

The first thing that strikes you about American Made is the humor. The film makes light of dangerous situations and ruthless people. Case in point, notorious drug kingpins Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) are not normally associated with big laughs. In American Made , they are enamored by Seal's piloting skills and ballsy personality. His treks through commie and drug infested jungles are told from a comical perspective. Liman portrays Seal as the "gringo" with no boundaries. Therein the humor lies. Seal was off his rocker to attempt any of this craziness. But the lure of easy money and aerial hijinks was too much to pass up.

Tom Cruise is pretty much in every frame of this film. There are quite a few supporting characters, but they get scant screen time. I wish Liman had done more with Seal's flying partners, the Medellin Cartel bosses, and JB (Caleb Landry Jones), his redneck brother in law. These characters add the spicy flavor to American Made . They are memorable and vitally important to the plot, but a blip in comparison to Cruise. I understand he's the big star, and does a decent enough job in the lead, but an opportunity was missed by not spreading the wealth.

The geopolitical events that drive American Made are glossed over. Liman doesn't get into what happened in Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia. The plot is squarely about Seal's involvement. We see and experience everything through his eyes. While I would have liked a deeper explanation of the circumstances, it makes sense, given this character's attributes to avoid them. Seal is no freedom fighter or patriot. He's a villain in his own story, utterly complicit from the go. Liman avoids any morality judgments. That's an interesting take given his family's history. Arthur Liman, Doug's father, was the chief counsel for the U.S. Senate during the Iran-Contra Affair.

From Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, American Made is a solidly fun crime flick. It's been described as Goodfellas in the sky. I wouldn't give it that lofty praise, especially since Cruise is the only "fella". But it's swift entertainment with a lot more laughs than expected. I look forward to the next Tom Cruise and Doug Liman outing. They definitely have a good rapport.

Why Bill Clinton And George W. Bush Are Portrayed In A Tom Cruise Movie About An Infamous Drug Smuggler

"I just wanted to just sort of say, 'We're not ignorant of those allegations,’” said American Made director Doug Liman. Warning: This story contains SPOILERS.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Tom Cruise in American Made .

American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life former airline pilot who embarked on a wildly successful cocaine smuggling operation between Colombia and a tiny airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980s. Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medellín cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega — and he was abetted, the film argues, by the CIA and DEA.

The most eyebrow-raising moments in American Made , however, come when Seal crosses paths with two other major historical figures: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

American Made screenwriter Gary Spinelli ( Stash House ) was interested in the Mena, Arkansas, story as possible fodder for a screenplay, and in his research, he kept coming across Seal. Along with Seal's wildly successful drug smuggling operation, and his subsequent cooperation with the DEA as an informant against the Medellín cartel, Spinelli discovered allegations that Seal was also flying missions for the CIA's campaign to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua — all of which transformed into the Iran-Contra scandal, and dominated President Ronald Reagan's second term.

As is to be expected from purported involvement in clandestine operations, Seal's work with the CIA remains in dispute . But in their interviews with BuzzFeed News, Spinelli and director Doug Liman ( Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity ) said that they were totally comfortable connecting Seal with the CIA based on the basic deduction that Seal could not have pulled off the massive scale of his drug smuggling operation without outside help. "He was flying in and out of the country, unbeknownst to all law enforcement, and it's pretty improbable that he would be able to do that on his own," said Spinelli.

Director Doug Liman and Cruise on the set of American Made .

Seal was murdered in 1986 , by Colombian nationals allegedly carrying out a contract on his life — a fact that, coupled with the fuzzy details surrounding his possible collusion with federal intelligence officials, makes him terrific fodder for a different kind of storytelling, and is ultimately what led the filmmakers to include Clinton and Bush in American Made .

"Barry Seal is like a conspiracy theorist magnet for the left and the right," said Liman.

For example, Spinelli said, "one of the big conspiracy theories around Barry is that he was [George] H.W. Bush's personal pilot, and when Barry was killed, he had Bush's phone number in his back pocket."

Neither filmmaker felt it was appropriate to include that unsubstantiated theory, but they also knew that astute audience members might already be familiar with it. Which is how American Made , which opens Sept. 29, ended up with a scene in which Seal is waiting for a meeting at the White House while sitting next to a young George W. Bush (Connor Trinneer) as they exchange small talk about piloting planes.

"I just wanted to put a little fun thing between Barry and George W. Bush to just sort of say, 'We're not ignorant of those allegations,'" said Liman. "'We're not going to put them in the movie, but we're not making this movie in a vacuum, either.'"

Spinelli said that since Seal reportedly did visit the Reagan White House, he was OK with placing him next to Bush, who also regularly visited the White House when his father was vice president. "You know, there's dramatic license there, but both [Seal and Bush] were pilots, and I just thought it would be a cool moment to have [H.W. Bush's] son meet Barry in the hallway," he said. (Representatives for George W. Bush did not respond to a request to comment.)

Left: An early photo of Bill Clinton, governor-elect of Arkansas. Right: George W. Bush in an undated photo in Arlington, Texas, speaking during a Texas Rangers game.

Seal's connection to Clinton, meanwhile, is even more fraught with conspiracies: Some claim that, as governor of Arkansas, Clinton actively participated with the CIA in smuggling cocaine into the US. Googling Clinton's and Seal's names together produces reams of stories with screaming headlines like "Mena Coverup - Bill & Hillary Clinton's Arkansas Cocaine Operation" and "EXPOSED: Clinton's Trafficked MASSIVE CIA Shipments of Cocaine" and "SNOW JOB: THE CIA, COCAINE, AND BILL CLINTON."

Before American Made went into production, Liman actually cut allegations in Spinelli's original script that the CIA was directly trafficking in cocaine with Seal — in part because, as fate would have it, the chief counsel for the Senate's investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal was Liman's late father, Arthur L. Liman. "My father's deputy said he had looked into those specific allegations and found them so without merit that he didn't even put it in the report to deny it because that gives it some weight," Liman said.

But both Spinelli and Liman understood that, as with the Bush family, they couldn't tell Seal's story and not at least tip their hats to the cottage industry of fringe Clinton conspiracies involving him. So they included a scene in which, after Seal has been arrested by multiple agencies, the attorney general of Arkansas fields a call from then-governor Clinton. Afterwards, Seal is released from custody and immediately whisked away to the White House — the implication being that Clinton had been asked by the Reagan administration to cut Seal loose so he could begin informing for the DEA.

Clinton never appears in the scene — we only know it's him on the phone after the state attorney general calls him "Bill" — but the filmmakers claim that this event, or at least something like it, did happen.

"We knew that somehow Barry was operating with immunity. The CIA was operating with immunity in Arkansas. So there had to have been some involvement of the governor's office," said Liman. "There is a prosecutor in Arkansas who was told to back off. And so we combined that with the fact that the CIA was for sure operating in Arkansas and Clinton was the governor, to condense it down into one specific moment."

Cruise in American Made .

In a 1994 press conference, President Clinton was asked specifically about how much he knew about the CIA's alleged operation in Mena, Arkansas. "They didn't tell me anything about it," Clinton said. "The airport in question and all the events in question were the subject of state and federal inquiries. It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. … We had nothing — zero — to do with it. And everybody who's ever looked into it knows that." (A representative for Clinton did not respond to a request seeking further comment.)

While both Spinelli and Liman stand by American Made ’s assertions, they ultimately set out to make an entertaining movie — and by having Seal narrate his own story, they can couch their narrative in his subjective point of view. "He really is telling you his version of it," said Spinelli. "What the facts are of the record don't matter as much as what Barry thought had happened."

"Nowhere does the film deal with the consequences of Barry's actions," added Liman. "Barry doesn't tell you the part of the story where, say, American inner cities are being decimated by the influx of drugs. That's not part of Barry's narrative. … We're not making a biopic. We're more interested in the mechanics of how an operation like this works, and the kinds of people that get involved. Because it's really fun." Particularly when it potentially involves former presidents.

Thumbnail photo credits: Bettmann / Bettmann Archive; David James / Universal Pictures; Rich Pilling / Getty Images

Topics in this article

• by MovieWeb

Similar News

• by Liam Gaughan
• Collider.com

• by Greg MacArthur
• ScreenRant.com

• by Christian Zilko

Universal Pictures

• by David Satin
• The Streamable

• by Mike Tyrkus
• CinemaNerdz

• by Rebecca Rubin
• Variety Film + TV

• by Richard Fink

• by Dhruv Sharma

• by Charles Papadopoulos

More to explore

• Variety - Film News

• by Kimberly Nordyke
• The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News

• by Michaela Zee

• by Pat Saperstein
• Variety - TV News

Celebrity News

• by Emira D'Spain
• Popsugar.com

• by Miguel Machado

• by Johanna Ferreira

• by Sarah Shachat

• by Witney Seibold

• by Phil Hoad
• The Guardian - Film News
• by Nick Caruso

• by Matt Webb Mitovich

• by Charlie Mason

Recently viewed

JUST IN: Palestinians say the Israeli military has withdrawn from Gaza’s main hospital after a two-week raid, leaving behind a vast swath of destruction.

Movie Review: Tom Cruise is drug-running maverick in ‘American Made’

Jason Fraley | [email protected]

September 28, 2017, 11:34 PM

• Share This:
• share on facebook
• share on threads
• share on linkedin
• share on email

WASHINGTON — In 2014, Doug Liman directed Tom Cruise in “Edge of Tomorrow,” a delightful sci-fi comedy that remains one of the most underrated flicks of the past decade.

This weekend, the duo reunites for the rollicking drug-trafficking flick “American Made.”

Set during the run-up to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, TWA pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is recruited by the CIA to fly secret missions to South America. What starts as mere surveillance evolves into drug running and weapons dealings that find him crossing paths with everyone from Pablo Escobar to Manuel Noriega. This allows Barry and his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) to live lavishly in remote Mena, Arkansas — until it all comes crashing down.

From the opening studio logos, it’s clear this flick isn’t afraid to break some rules and have some self-aware fun. If you liked the “Live, Die, Repeat” antics of “Edge of Tomorrow,” you’ll dig Cruise’s reunion with director Doug Liman, who’s proven he can do comedy (“Swingers”), action (“The Bourne Identity”) and sometimes a little of both (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”).

In “American Made,” Liman is having an absolute blast with the genre, keeping things moving at a “Goodfellas” clip with flashy edits, electric pacing and a funky soundtrack featuring such gems as Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” (1976), a disco take on classical music.

Still, Liman’s best choice is the framing device of Cruise documenting his journey on a VHS camcorder. These clips not only elicit the nostalgia of “sex, lies and videotape” (1989), they provide comic relief after tense moments, just like Matt Damon in “The Martian” (2015). Disguising exposition as direct-address narration, it all builds to a finish we don’t see coming.

Of course, none of it would work without Cruise, who reminds us why he’s been such a box office force. It’s great seeing him back in the cockpit decades after “Top Gun” (1986), only this time as a drug-running “maverick.” His charismatic charm is in top form, offering subtle acting choices for laugh-out-loud moments, particularly as his wife asks him for new appliances.

Speaking of his wife, Wright blends a trio of Scorsese roles: Lorraine Bracco in “Goodfellas” (1990), Sharon Stone in “Casino” (1995) and Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). At times, her presence feels mostly limited to sex appeal, but she’s still effective tapping her foot impatiently on the homefront waiting for Cruise to explain his continued absences.

Perhaps her most crucial function is to spark a family subplot with her reckless brother-in-law J.B. (Caleb Landry Jones). Rather than the creepy brother he played in “Get Out” (2017), this time he’s a mullet-wearing redneck who’s a little too careless with cash, drawing the suspicion of a local detective (Jesse Plemons). When it comes to stooges slipping up, it’s all relative(s).

The way this subplot plays out — setting up expectations then subverting them — is just one of the treats by screenwriter Gary Spinelli (“Stash House”). His script never quite goes where you think, proving consistently engaging as Cruise gets deeper and deeper into his covert obligations. It shows that you don’t sell your soul to the devil up front; rather, it’s a gradual negotiation of casual compromises, routine handshakes and “big little lies” of omission.

This theme burns bright in the devil’s grin of Domhnall Gleeson, who is perfect as the covert CIA agent nicknamed “Schafer.” If you’re not already on the Gleeson fan train after his quiet string of impressive credits in “Ex Machina” (2014), “Brooklyn” (2015) and “The Revenant” (2015), you will be after “American Made.” He’s the corrupt federal glue that holds it together.

The end result is a cynical, damning political commentary disguised as action-comedy. The subtext packs plenty of satirical bite, from President Ronald Reagan pardoning a turkey amid Iran-Contra questions, to Nancy Reagan delivering her “just say no” address while the U.S. trades drugs and arms to the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. There’s even brief run-ins with Bill Clinton as governor of Arkansas and George W. Bush as a young pilot.

In the end, it’s really nothing we haven’t seen before with hints of Ray Liotta in “Goodellas” (1990), Johnny Depp in “Blow” (2001) and Bryan Cranston in “The Infiltrator” (2016). But instead of Henry Hill going into witness protection upon his arrest, Barry Seal continually receives promotions within the government. This alone is worth the price of admission for “American Made,” an American-made gem that redefines the phrase “pleasantly surprising.”

Hailed by The Washington Post for “his savantlike ability to name every Best Picture winner in history," Jason Fraley began at WTOP as Morning Drive Writer in 2008, film critic in 2011 and Entertainment Editor in 2014, providing daily arts coverage on-air and online.

• 202-895-5115

Related News

Ramy Youssef references Israel-Hamas war in ‘Saturday Night Live’ monologue

Harvard says it’s removed human skin from binding of 19th century book

Tyla, South Africa’s amapiano angel, manifests stardom in debut album

Recommended.

Stormy, wet conditions across DC area following fair Easter weekend

Easter eggs roll onto White House lawn — and road closures roll out in downtown DC

Baltimore officials to open a 'temporary alternate channel' next to Key Bridge, port leader says

Related categories:.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

Tom Cruise runs drugs for the CIA in explosive American Made trailer

Within the first 20 seconds of the new trailer for Universal’s American Made , Tom Cruise outruns the DEA, downs a plane in the middle of a suburban avenue, and runs through said street while covered in cocaine.

The film’s first preview, which dropped Monday morning, teases a seemingly action-packed ride for the movie star, who re-teamed with his Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman to shoot the action-comedy, which recounts the real-life story of Barry Seal, an ex-TWA pilot and drug runner who, after being sentenced to a decade of imprisonment for his crimes, was recruited by the CIA to run a covert operation against Pablo Escobar.

Cruise costars in the flashy clip alongside Sarah Wright, who plays Seal’s wife, Lucy, and Domhnall Gleeson as Monty Schafer, a CIA operative who enlists Seal’s services.

“All of this is legal?” Cruise asks shortly after he’s asked to act as a transport. “If you’re doing it for the good guys,” Gleeson responds. Hilarity (and countless life-or-death encounters) ensues.

After production on the film, originally titled Mena , wrapped in 2015, a small twin-engine plane carrying crew members crashed near Medellin , Colombia, killing pilot Alan Purwin and Carlos Berl, a Colombia native. A third passenger — pilot Jimmy Lee Garland — was seriously injured.

Following the accident, Purwin’s widow, Kathryn, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the film’s producers in April 2016, including Cross Creek Pictures, Imagine Entertainment, Vendian Entertainment, and Quadrant Pictures, with additional relatives later going after Berl’s estate, alleging that he was flying the plane without proper experience. Berl’s estate later countersued , claiming he’d informed producers of his insufficient aircraft-flying skills.

American Made infiltrates domestic theaters Sept. 29. Watch the film’s first trailer above, and check out its new poster below.

Related Articles

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Tom Cruise to play 20-stone drug trafficker

Mission Impossible actor set to star as CIA double agent Barry ‘Fat Man’ Seal in 80s-set story of the Medellín cartel

Tom Cruise is planning a significant weight gain to play a 20-stone American pilot who trafficked drugs and guns for the Medellín cartel in the 1980s-set biopic Mena, reports the New York Post .

The 52-year-old star is due to appear next on the big screen in a fifth Mission: Impossible movie. But the newspaper’s Page Six column suggests he will follow that up with a turn as Adler B Seal, known as Barry, in the blood-strewn biopic Mena for Bourne Identity director Doug Liman.

Cruise donned fatsuit to play eccentric studio executive Len Grossman in 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder , but is not otherwise known for taking roles that require a dramatic weight gain. The transformation is the kind of sacrifice Oscars voters tend to reward, and the three-times-nominated actor might have one eye on his first Academy Award win. On the other hand, Seal has been played before onscreen as a normally proportioned man, notably by Dennis Hopper, in the 1991 HBO docudrama Double Crossed.

Seal, known as the “Fat Man”, was a pilot for the Medellín cartel and subsequently an agent for the CIA. Operating out of a shady airport in Mena, Arkansas, the Louisiana-born smuggler transported cannabis, cocaine and later Quaaludes into the US from South America between 1976 and 1984, when he was arrested. He then volunteered to work for US authorities to avoid incarceration, but was shot dead in 1986 at a safe house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by Colombian hitmen working for Medellín.

Liman is reportedly due to meet with Cruise in London to discuss the role. Mena is based on a screenplay by Gary Spinelli, which was picked up by Universal Pictures last year following a bidding war . Liman replaced Ron Howard in the director’s chair following the $1m (£660,000) deal.

• Crime films

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

trending now

Sean 'Diddy' Combs posts Easter photos of 1-year-old daughter...

Why Judge Judy's return to TV is bad news for her old bosses at...

Shirtless Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs steps out for a smoke at his...

Paris Hilton posts adorable snaps with her 1-year-old 'Easter...

Mark Estes admits he was ‘a little nervous’ on first date...

Rebel Wilson admits she used Ozempic to help lose weight: Those...

Rebel Wilson claims Adele 'hates' her, 'didn't like being...

'Sister Wives' star Janelle Brown says things have been 'hard'...

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to copy URL

Tom Cruise broke up with Elsina Khayrova over his team’s concerns about her chatty ex-hubby: sources

• View Author Archive
• Email the Author
• Follow on Twitter
• Get author RSS feed

Contact The Author

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

Tom Cruise split from his Russian socialite girlfriend in order to avoid issues with her outspoken oligarch ex, a source tells Page Six.

Following news that Cruise and Elsina Khayrova were dating , her ex-husband — the colorful international diamond trader, Dmitry Tsvetkov — gave a long interview to the Daily Mail detailing their marriage and warning Cruise to “keep his eyes and wallet wide open.” 

A source tells us that the article worried the very private star’s team.

“He’s filming and can’t be shooting and have her husband saying stuff every time he is mentioned in the press,” a source told us. “They just didn’t want to deal with the ex husband coming up with something nasty to say every few weeks.” 

Tsetkov — who reportedly prefers the term “tycoon” over oligarch — also somewhat unusually continuously fanned over Cruise during the interview, calling him his “favorite actor,” stating he has seen “Eyes Wide Shut” a whopping 30 times (and also loves “Rain Man” and “The Firm”), and added that he talked with a Hollywood producer pal about having Cruise play him in a movie about his life.

“I told the producer that the only actor who could play me is Tom Cruise,” quipped Tsetkov to the UK outlet. “We’re about the same height and weight and I would be honored if that could happen. I couldn’t think of anyone better to play me than Tom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet him one day to discuss this project.”

Cruise has been making headlines as he currently films his eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie. The actor, 61, who known for doing his own stunts, was most recently seen sprinting through London for a scene.

The Sun reported that Cruise and Khayrova had split in late February with a source telling the outlet, “There are no hard feelings between them and, for Tom, their relationship simply ran its course.”

The wealthy Russian socialite is the daughter of a Vladamir Putin ally, Russian politician Rinat Khayrova. 

Tsetkov, who has British citizenship and was reportedly on the Kremlin’s most wanted list in 2020, claims to have survived assassination attempts .

In the Daily Mail article, he also said he spent over $12 million on clothes and approximately $2.5 million on handbags for his ex during their 11 year marriage. He also claimed he lost nearly $200 million in the divorce. 

Their  split made international headlines  as millions were in dispute, including a mansion in Surrey, England, five London apartments, a Bentley and a Ferrari, plus Cartier jewelry and artwork by Renoir and Chagall.

“Irrespective of whoever she’s with, Tom Cruise or anybody else, they should be aware that she likes the finer things in life and has expensive and luxurious tastes,” he told the publication.

But we hear that Khayrova, 36, is still hopeful she and Cruise could rekindle their romance. “She didn’t do anything wrong,” says our source. 

However, she doesn’t seem to be taking the breakup too badly. She has been Instagramming from the luxe Amara hotel in Cyprus this week.

On Thursday, she posted an image on Instagram Stories of herself saying: “A woman’s energy is reflected in her daily practice of loving, appreciating, and accepting herself, as well as recognizing her own worth,” with a heart emoji.

In another, a caption read, “Always in love,” with a heart emoji.

Khayrova and Cruise were first spotted together publicly at a party in December in London’s Grosvenor Square, and Page Six exclusively reported that they had met when a friend of Khayrova’s brought her to one of his exclusive Sunday tea parties at his Hyde Park penthouse.

“He has butlers and homemade cakes, and it’s all very British,” said our source at the time.

In June 2022, Page Six  exclusively reported  that Cruise was shopping for apartments in the UK after falling in love with London.

Share this article:

Advertisement