SECOND SCREEN

American Made (15A) is a difficult film to warm to. It features a familiar yet far-fetched-feeling story, an unlikeable central character and Tom Cruise with that eternally boyish thing of his dialled up to about 11. You’re 55, Tom, for goodness sake.

But for all its potentially annoying features – and if you’re not totally up to here with films about the Medellin drugs cartel – there’s not actually a whole lot wrong with it. Loosely based on a true story, it sees Cruise (pictured with Sarah Wright) playing Barry Seal who, back in the Sixties, was best known for being the youngest pilot working for Trans World Airlines but who went on to carve out an extraordinary career as a drug-smuggler and CIA informant.

Most accounts of his life seem to suggest that the drugsmuggling came first but here – perhaps to spare us the sight of Cruise playing an out-and-out bad guy – he’s recruited by the CIA straight from the now-defunct TWA. The mysterious ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson) has busted him for a little sideline in smuggling cigars for Cuban emigrés, so to avoid losing his job and possibly a spell in jail, the least Barry can do is agree to run photographic reconnaissance missions over Central America. But when he runs out of fuel the wrong side of the border, he is bundled up by thugs working for what will soon be known as the Medellin cartel. One of Pablo Escobar’s lieutenants has an intriguing proposition. How would he like to fly cocaine back into the US? Seal shakes his head. At $2,000 a kilo? Suddenly they have a deal. But while the Colombian cartel is fully aware that Barry is working for the CIA, does the CIA know he’s become a drug-smuggler? It’s never quite