American Made
Cert: 15 / 115 mins / Dir. Doug Liman / Trailer
One of the main reasons I go to the cinema on a Friday afternoon is that there's a smaller footfall than evening screenings, so the film is less likely to be disturbed by badly behaved patrons. That said, even I was surprised when I was one of four people watching the August-release of a Tom Cruise™ movie. Either the diminutive screen-god's appeal is waning, or Universal have absolutely no idea how to market this movie. And after the overall reception of their last collaboration, either is eminently possible…
Cruise plays Barry Seal, an airline pilot making a sideline in the late 1970s smuggling low-level contraband from South America, when he's recruited by the CIA to use his skills for more sensitive operations. Before long, his successes catch the attention of drug cartels, revolutionary forces, the DEA and FBI, all of whom want some of That Seal Magic, all of whom are willing to pay handsomely. Whether Barry's wife and children share his professional enthusiasm is a different matter…
Well, this is a pleasantly interesting mess. Skimming through events from 1976 up to a framing device in 1986, director Doug Liman presents a barrage of vignettes rather than a continuous narrative. Our protagonist's first-person narration does its best to stitch the scenes together, but there's always the feeling that this is an 800-page biography hacked down to just under two hours. The movie certainly captures the air of barely-controlled chaos, probably a little too well in fact.
There's always the feeling that Seal's enterprise is one step away from going completely south, even during the second-act high. The problem then is that you can't ramp up the tension for the climax because the audience is exhausted trying to keep up. The necessarily convoluted story is made needlessly more so by the erratic editing and camerawork. Many of the shots have fantastic Instagram-type filtering applied but this is used inconsistently, even within individual scenes. Visually, this film is all over the place.
While Sarah Wright and Caleb Landry Jones do their very best in supporting performances as Barry's wife and brother-in-law respectively, pretty much every shot revolves around That Guy Who's Smiling On The Poster. And young Tom is woefully miscast here; great at being Tom Cruise™ in a role crying out for another actor (his character's Southern Accent rears its head every ten minutes or so, only to skulk immediately away again). Without having met the real-life Mr Seal, one would imagine an actual drug-smuggler, arms-supplier and money-launderer would have a requisite level of roguish charm, rather than Tom's casual naivety. After two hours in his company, I'm still none the wiser as to how much of Barry Seal is in Tom's undemanding performance. American Made is never unpleasant to watch, but at the same time you know it often needs to be.
A more cynical version of me might even suggest that Liman is afraid of making Tom Cruise™ the bad guy, or even the anti-hero, of the story. In which case you'd have to wonder what the point of the film is, exactly. 2015's Black Mass is a perfect example of an almost uniformly bland actor (these days, at least) getting their teeth into a thoroughly reprehensible yet magnetic character. And when Johnny Depp is out-acting you, you're really not trying.
Yet for all my complaining, it's fun. From Domhnall Gleeson's wonderfully enigmatic government agent to the volatile drug-cartels and law enforcement agencies, the brisk pacing leaves little-to-no downtime and the lion's share of runtime is like a GTA-inspired farce*1. But it's a story told from a barstool, rather than from an armchair.
Entertaining, if thoroughly unfocused and ultimately forgettable, this is Scarface for the Hangover generation. If only Barry Seal had half the character of Tony Montana…
This film's a bit War Dogs, although it tries to have more fun.
Only if you have a burning need to see the film soon; you won't lose too much by catching this at home.
Not as much as it thinks it does.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 1: General Hux is in this.
*1 I say this a lot, but during this movie I really had a hankering to play Vice City Stories. And it's not so much that American Made lost my attention at all, just that I really fucking love Vice City Stories… [ BACK ]
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