HIGH IN THE SKY
Tom Cruise takes flight as a gleefully corrupt drug runner in speedy historical crime drama
IT’S nice to be reminded that Tom Cruise has the chops to play somebody other than Tom Cruise, Action Hero. Granted, he’s a hotshot pilot in “American Made,” but this is dark stuff: His Southern-fried character, Barry Seal, is an amoral opportunist who cheerfully runs drugs for the Medellín cartel and guns for a sketchy CIA mission. In what may be one of the funniest Cruise moments ever, he also crash-lands a tiny plane in a suburban cul-de-sac and frantically pedals away from the accident on a purloined kiddie bike, trailing clouds of the spilled cocaine that’s dusted him from head to toe.
Director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Edge of Tomorrow”) finds plenty to mine from the real-life story of Seal, a commercial-airline pilot who became a South American drug runner and CIA patsy in the years leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal (a time period that also excelled at classic rock — sampled generously for the soundtrack). It’s unclear exactly how much truth remains in this telling — the part where the CIA sneaks hundreds of Nicaraguan Contras (who are trying to overthrow their country’s Sandinista government) into the woods of small-town Arkansas for training seems a particular stretch. But Cruise, in one of his best performances in recent years, makes Seal a plausible if not especially sympathetic anti-hero.
We meet Seal as he’s growing bored with his job as a TWA pilot, despite his side hustle smuggling cigars. A comically glib CIA operative (Domhnall Gleeson) homes in on the pilot’s wanderlust, blackmailing him into a new gig surveilling guerilla communist armies in Central America. Soon, Seal is palling around with drug lord Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejía) and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega (Alberto Ospino), and double-cross- ing just about everyone to make mad money. He’s like the Zelig of early ’80s nefarious foreign affairs. His wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright), is not inclined to question the goings-on.
Interference from a hillbilly brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) catches the eye of a sheriff (Jesse Plemons) and increases the heat on Seal’s operations, setting off a downward spiral.
Entertaining particulars aside, this trope is pretty well-worn — the game everyman who finds making illegal money easy and fun, until it isn’t. As the title suggests, it’s as American as Walmart apple pie: “If this isn’t the greatest country in the world!” Seal drawls, shoving duffel bags of cash into every available space in his garish pink mansion.
Much like one of Seal’s below-the-radar flights, the film levels off midway through, its gun-and-drugrunning anecdotes blending into one another, becoming increasingly blurry. But its portrait of corruption is driven home as Seal’s story dovetails with a part of history many of us already know: The government gets caught selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. It all makes for a fruitful story with a gleefully rotten core.