YOUR FILM REVIEWER
Greg Thorp has been a huge film enthusiast from a very young age. He is a huge Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson fan. One of his all-time favourite picks is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones was one of the first films he had ever seen and is his favourite childhood film. You can email him with comments and observations at: communities@menmedia.co.uk
American Made, 15, 115 mins, Cross Creek Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. Starring: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright Rating: Director: Doug Liman
AMERICAN Made tells the story of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), a TWA pilot who is recruited by the CIA to help counter the emerging communist threat in Central America during the cold war.
Seal’s role in this major covert operation spins out of control when he becomes a double-agent working inside the notorious Medellin drug cartel, an episode that ultimately embarrassed the Reagan White House after the scandal became public.
American Made is a decent film and initially warranted a three star rating from me.
Then I did some research only to learn that this movie is extremely inaccurate.
In many of Cruise’s other films he plays characters who are effectively invincible and larger-than-life, for example Ethan Hunt from the Mission Impossible franchise. I like to describe this as the movie being ‘Cruisified’.
This is usually fine and often fun to watch.
However in this instance Cruise portrays a non-fictional, real-life person.
The character, as played by Cruise, is brash and arrogant whereas Barry Seal was actually a rather serious individual.
In this film, Seal leaps from one high-risk undercover deal to another, barely pausing for a moment’s reflection, whereas in truth Seal was meticulous and cautious in everything he did.
This film’s jovial, free-wheeling tone seriously undermines any claim to realism.
The plot is fairly stereotypical for a crime film. The character engages in illegal activities, becomes extremely rich, and then either dies or ends up behind bars.
The best example of this is 1990s’ Goodfellas, however ‘American Made’ is drab in comparison.
This storyline is summed up by the word ‘hamartia’- a fatal flaw (eg. drug taking, overweening arrogance) which leads to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine. This is seen in just about every film of the genre, sadly causing all but the exceptional to be relatively stale concepts. This is not exceptional. The historically inaccurate character created by Cruise was necessary to fit in with the historically inaccurate tone of the film.
Cruise shows all his quality with a comedic and charismatic performance similar to that in his role in ‘Top Gun’ – one of the most widely known films of all time.
With all this in consideration, I would still have preferred a more self-aware take on this story where the characters were more authentic.
This film sacrifices style for substance which is tragic as the gritty story of Barry Seal is the one that truly deserves to be told.