American Made
Cert: 15A; Now showing
Although movies “based on true stories” can be subject to liberal adjustments, truth is indeed often stranger than fiction. American Made is a case in both points. It is based on a strangerthan-fiction true story, and liberally adjusted.
It’s been heavily promoted and as per standard issue, the funniest parts are in the trailer. However Doug Liman’s film is sharp, roundly entertaining and well worth a cinema trip. Just pay attention, it gets complex at times.
Barry Seal was a skilled pilot and a dodgy dealer and Liman has said his casting of Tom Cruise in the role was a deliberate subversion of the Top Gun image. Gary Spinelli’s screenplay however does substantially clean Seal up for the fictional version. It begins with him as a TWA pilot in the 1970s getting caught smuggling relatively innocuous cigars from Cuba. He is recruited by a CIA agent named Shafer (played by Domhnall Gleeson), to help bust the burgeoning Medellin drug cartel. And then, while he’s at it, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
In reality Seal had already been fired from TWA and was busted smuggling far less innocuous plastic explosives from Mexico when the CIA recruited him. But the basic details of the back and forth, the double dealing and the extraordinary people that the often-bungling Seal dealt with, are true. And none of the characters or agencies are glorified; everyone is morally dodgy.
The performances are good but I wasn’t entirely sold on the casting of either lead, although Sarah Wright as Seal’s wife is great. With the narration and sheer out-of-depthness of the main character, there is a vague Goodfellas feel, without the violence.