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American Made is like a black-market Forrest Gump—just slick and loose enough to outweigh its historical foolishness. It tells the hyperbolized story of pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), who flew covert smuggling missions for the CIA and Medellín drug cartel in the early '80s.
Seal's wild brushes with figures like Oliver North, Manuel Noriega and George W. Bush are rendered with narration and montage. Director Doug Liman doesn't just make Tom Cruise act, he makes him sweat and stumble through the action sequences. The director-star dynamic made a hit of their first movie together (Edge of Tomorrow), and it's what makes American Made work, too.
As Seal, Cruise is somewhere between a cowboy of the skies and a total schmuck. Liman frames Seal's story as a loud, absurd, quintessentially American joke—we're never meant to admire Seal for amassing his millions from gun and drug-running.
It's the kind of movie where Pablo Escobar screams "cocaine!" at Seal while helicoptering above a field of coca plants. Anything else is just a narrative casualty of an action-comedy about embracing chaos.
CRITIC'S RATING: 3/4 stars.
American Made is rated R and now playing at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport.
