Tom Cruise powers new movie 'American Made' with easy charm
After Universal's box office stiff "The Mummy" threatened to prematurely wrap Tom Cruise's leading-man career, Doug Liman's fact-based "American Made" puts the action star back where he belongs - up, up into the wild and crazy blue yonder.
Cruise plays Barry Seal, a TWA commercial pilot whose penny-ante smuggling operations (he sneaks Cuban cigars into the U.S.) attract the attention of a mysterious CIA operative named Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson, emanating bureaucratic arrogance).
It's 1978 during the Carter Administration. Schafer needs a devil-may-care pilot to buzz significant Central American locations and snap a few bazillion surveillance photos for the U.S. government.
Barry's TWA job bores him silly, plus he has a growing family with his wife, Lucy (a beguiling and woefully underemployed Sarah Wright), and could use some extra income.
In short order, Barry goes from aerial spy to cocaine smuggler for the infamous Medellín Cartel, then gun runner for the Contras in their fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Early on, Barry's voice-over narration warns us with comical understatement that "(stuff) gets really crazy from here on." He's not kidding.
He becomes a key player in the Iran-Contra affair that dogged the Reagan Administration. That's after he mysteriously inherits a 2,000-acre abandoned airport in the middle of Arkansas where the U.S. secretly trains Contras forces.
Back when Gary Spinelli wrote this screenplay, some of these twists and revelations probably seemed outrageously stretched to make a good story. With current investigations into charges of collusion between the White House and Russia in full swing, the political and economic shenanigans in "American Made" seem surprisingly plausible. Perhaps frighteningly so.
(For the record, trailers spoil one of the movie's most crowd-pleasing twists. Thanks, Universal Pictures.)
Constantly soaked in sweat underneath a cheap haircut that avoids referencing styles from either the late '70s or early '80s, Cruise takes quiet control of this unabashed star vehicle and powers it with affable con-man charm and the same macho bravado he honed as a U.S. fighter pilot in 1986's "Top Gun."
Reunited with his "Edge of Tomorrow" director Liman, Cruise smoothly skates through a lighthearted examination of one man's American dream, one that includes so much cash that Barry runs out of places to stash it.
"American Made" suffers from a problematic framing device: Barry videotapes himself narrating this movie. Not only does this feel like a feeble justification for voice-over narration, authorities who eventually find his VHS tapes will no doubt wonder how Barry could know what people said and did when he was far away and could not know this information.
"City of God" cinematographer César Charlone paints "American Made" in supersaturated colors of near-neon intensity.
His erratic quick zooms and jostling handheld cameras suggest a documentary style, but it does not work as well as you'd imagine for this comic drama that fails to address the ethics of its characters and their governments.
What does work well is Cruise's winning performance as a corrupt capitalist whose love of country and family ranks considerably lower than cash and adrenaline buzzes. He's an anti-hero we actually like.
“American Made”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Caleb Landry Jones
Directed by: Doug Liman
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 115 minutes