Made in America

Shaking off his lackluster performance in the recent ‘The Mummy’ remake, Tom Cruise returns to form in ‘American Made,’ the “inspired by a true story” account of the life (and death) of Barry Seal, an airline pilot recruited by the CIA to conduct aerial reconnaissance on Central American Marxist revolutionaries who also moonlighted as a drug smuggler for the Medellin cartel during the 1980’s (my favorite decade).  Real life stories are often compelling and can be stranger than fiction, and ‘American Made’ certainly qualifies as one of them.

 

Set during the Reagan era, ‘American Made’ is a nostalgic trip down memory lane.  The US is recovering from the energy crisis but facing the spread of communism in its own backyard in the guise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  With the specter of Vietnam still making direct military intervention impossible, the new president sought to fight a low-intensity shadow war by proxy against the Marxist insurrectionists.  If the movie is to be believed, Seal was instrumental in this effort, first conducting dangerous low altitude photo-reconnaissance missions in a twin-engine plane for the CIA before directly supplying AK-47’s to the Contra “freedom fighters” in their half-hearted fight against the Sandinistas.  There is simply nothing Seal couldn’t do; he was also a regular errand boy for the US government in its underhanded dealings (as in bribery) with a certain colonel at the time in Panama by the name of Manuel Noriega.

 

While Cruise may be deemed too handsome and lean compared to the man he portrayed in the film, his natural charisma and commanding performance carried the movie along with its snappy pacing and near constant sense of danger.  Seal was one of those “adventurous” people who loves to play with fire and court disaster, and his exploits in the movie consist of one tightrope walking act after another as he worked both sides of the law to his own advantage even if it ultimately proved to be his undoing.  Director Doug Liman demonstrated a flair for the dramatic in this riveting docudrama, portraying Seal as neither good nor evil but simply human, warts and all.

Grade: B+