Cocaine, Contras, Cutaways
American Made is one of those movies that manages to bore you nearly the instant it comes on. It’s no fault of the filmmakers or actors. It’s that the second we realize that a) this is going to be a late 70s period piece and b) Pablo Escobar’s cocaine trade is going to be involved, we slump a little in our seats thinking “gee, what’s new?”
The style, also, will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short – a big flippant caper disguised as history complete with voice-narration, montages, a giddy rise, and a steep fall.
The only part that doesn’t seem so familiar is Cruise himself, in the title role of Barry Seal, an airline pilot from Texas so bored he has to moonlight as a drug runner while working for the CIA. Oh and he sort of creates the Iran-Contra affair while he’s at it.
One of the movie’s taglines is “One Man Played Them All,” – scarcely accurate by our measure. Barry remains more happened upon than happening – not the master of his own fate let alone anyone else’s. The last Mission Impossible installment saw Cruise hanging from the door of an Airbus 400. By comparison, the most Cruise ever gets out of Barry Seal is a Texan accent and a wide-eyed stare. After a plane crash leaves him covered, head to toe, in cocaine, the man doesn’t even sniff.
The fact that American Made is based on a true story winds up being its saving grace. After about an hour, the plot twists become so outrageous that we cannot help but be drawn in. One minute Barry’s dumping bundles of cocaine over the Texan desert. Another he’s watching Ollie North demand he be set free. We find ourselves slipping to the edge of our seats in wonderment at what they’re going throw at us next. Will Barry run afoul of the cartels? Will he be burned by the CIA? Will he become Pope?
Helping the whole thing move along is excellent direction by Doug Liman, known recently for his Bourne movies as well as the underrated sci-fi war movie Edge of Tomorrow (also the best Cruise movie of the last five years). Some will find the style slightly condescending – the movie’s cartoon rendering of the scheme to supply Nicaraguan Contras with guns is reminiscent of those awfully cute cutaways in The Big Short where celebrities explained mortgage backed securities. Yet, Liman embraces the absurdity, and, using top rate camera work by César Charlone, has a lot of fun swinging us from one turn to the next, all under a vintage gloss (was it just us or did the footage have a certain grainy texture?). There’s even a fun cameo by a young George W. Bush. Apparently, a scene involving Bill Clinton and some strippers was cut at the last minute.