Cruise control:
Actor cool, calm, cynical as he wings it in ‘American Made.’
Watching Tom Cruise in a film can be exhausting.
The guy is just always so on. He’s an underrated actor, but he works so hard at being likable, if not always relatable, that you practically can see him sweat.
Which you do in “American Made,” and in this case it’s to good purpose. “American Made” is an enjoyable, gleefully cynical Cruise vehicle directed by Doug Limon, with whom Cruise made the excellent “Edge of Tomorrow.” “American Made” is not the equal of that movie, but that has more to do with the story (the screenplay is by
Gary Spinelli) than the star.
Cruise plays Barry Seal, a bored TWA pilot in the 1970s who makes extra cash smuggling Cuban cigars. This does not go unnoticed, but Seal isn’t punished, he’s rewarded. Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), a CIA operative, recruits Seal for missions flying a souped-up twin-engine plane over resistance camps in Latin America, taking photographs.
(The film is just crazy enough to be based on a true story, though loosely.)
Seal is good at his new job, which he hides from Lucy (Sarah Wright), his wife. His duties expand; soon he is delivering cash to Manuel Noriega (Alberto Ospino) for information. Not long after he attracts the attention of up-and-coming drug dealer Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia), who wants Seal to fly cocaine into theUnited States on his way home from his photography
Tom Cruise glistens in cynical ‘American Made’
missions.
It’s a who’s who of 1980s bad guys, and there stands Seal in the center of it all, a Forrest Gump of illegal activity.
And why not? If the money’s right, Seal will do just about anything. But he’s more reckless than careful, and soon Schafer is bailing him out of a Colombian jail. The end of the line? Nope. Schafer sets him up with his own airport in a tiny Arkansas town, with a new line of work: running guns to the Contras.
The CIA turns a blind eye to the drug smuggling, and soon Seal is swimming in cash, more than his wife and kids can spend. More than he can launder. More, even, than he can bury in the backyard. He builds his own private air force to help handle the workload.
It will come as no surprise in life or in fiction that this can’t go on forever, that at some point the magic must run out, particularly for someone willing to play both sides against the middle. But not before involving Oliver North and the IranContra scandal. (Limon’s father was chief counsel for the Senate during the Iran-Contra hearings.)
Throughout it all, Seal maintains a sense of calm and cool, a suggestion that he can handle anything. Anyone can look past the swagger to see him sweat, whether because of the heat in the Latin American counties he’s flying to or because of the heat applied by various government agencies, which are using him more than he either realizes or cares to recognize.
Having the Medellin Cartel after you isn’t relaxing, either.
It’s refreshing to see the famous Cruise grin used more as a mask than a crutch. It’s hard work convincing everyone around you that you’ve got this covered, especially when you’re also trying to convince yourself. It’s to Cruise’s credit that he allows us to see the bravado and the doubt that fuels it.
The film is a little too polished and slick to really provide the slap in the face of the U.S. government it intends to deliver. But as a means for Cruise to shake off the dust of movies like “The Mummy” for something more substantive, it more than succeeds.