'American Made' Is a Fun Biopic of a Notorious Real-Life Figure

Tom Cruise is one of my favorite actors, and it’s nice that, after starring in the crappy Mummy reboot earlier this year and the forgettable Jack Reacher sequel last year (which I didn’t even bother watching), he got to have another great movie – two years since his last one, which is Rogue Nation.  This movie is American Made, in which he plays Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who became a drug runner for the infamous Medellín Cartel while performing flying missions for the CIA in the 70’s and 80’s.

The biopic sees Seal be recruited by a CIA agent named Schafer (Domhall Gleeson) to fly clandestine reconnaissance missions over Central America.  Soon, he’s also asked to be the carrier between the Agency and a Panaman military officer who sells them intel about the communists.  It is during one of these missions when he’s picked up by the Medellín Cartel and is propositioned to smuggle drugs to the USA for $2,000 per kilo.  Seal accepts, and he eventually gets richer and richer from the arrangement – earning more money than he knows what to do with.  Meanwhile, the CIA is very much willing to look the other way because of the good work he provides them – which soon extends to smuggling guns to Contras and bringing Contras to US soil to be trained.

It’s a very enjoyable film.  I really liked the tone it went for, which is comedic and breezy – very The Wolf of Wall Street-like.  I laughed a lot of times, and was amused all throughout.  In fact, I appreciate the dark humor here more than in The Wolf of Wall Street, which I thought was too blatantly hedonistic for my taste.

The featured story is quite fascinating.  Sure, as all movies-based-on-real-life are, it also has a couple of fictional elements added.  Still, a lot of remarkable, absurd details it presented truly happened, more or less, and these are simply stressed by the satirical execution.

Lastly, Barry Seal is a bad guy.  Yet the movie’s presentation of him, coupled with Tom Cruise’s charming portrayal, shows the money-loving, thrill-seeking scoundrel in a very likable light.  Nonetheless, I don’t think this is a negative for the film since it’s not necessarily a celebration of a notorious figure, considering the context of the film’s style.

In the end, I’ve really found no problems with this movie.  I thought it nailed what it’s going for.  For that, I generally deem American Made a fun, must-watch movie.