American Made Has Tom Cruise Doing Strong Work In Committing 1980's Debauchery

My yearning for Tom Cruise to do more non-blockbuster work has been heightened by seeing him in American Made, which has Cruise delivering one of his better performances in a while as Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), an airline pilot who passes time in his mundane life by smuggling certain everyday items across the border for those willing to pay up for such items. He's caught in the act by a CIA agent known as Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) who offers Barry the chance to use both his piloting skills and his yearning for a more exciting life by piloting a plane that can take photos of the bases of operations for Communist insurgents located South of the American border.

Barry Seal takes the job without even blinking and he does a fine job with it, though with his family looking to expand with the impending arrival of kids, he's looking for a pay raise that the CIA just won't provide. His prayers for more cash get answered by some members of the Medellin Cartel who want Barry to transport their product over the border. From there, well, all kinds of duplicity and craziness ensue as Seal begins to work for both the U.S. government and illicit drug cartels and all the while he's gathering up more money than you can possibly imagine. This whole charade is obviously a delicate house of cards though and it's only a matter of time before a gust of wind comes in and knocks everything down.

I've seen comparisons made between American Made and The Wolf Of Wall Street, and while there are parallels between both of those specific films, the two features American Made most clearly evoked in its tone and story were Pain & Gain and Burn After Reading in that, like that pair of motion pictures, American Made is a farcical tale about an ordinary dimwit who gets in over his head for selfish reasons. Of course, there are plenty of differences between these movies, namely Barry Seal is meant to be more sympathetic as a lead character than any of the three aforementioned films and American Made isn't anywhere near as good as Burn After Reading or The Wolf Of Wall Street, but that should give you a good frame of reference for the kind of motion picture this is.

Even if it isn't as good as the best of its brethren in the 21st subgenre of normal nitwits finding themselves in over their head in the pursuit of money, American Made is still a pretty good endeavor that proves that Doug Liman and Tom Cruise make for a mighty fine combo. Liman manages to one of Cruise's better performances for the part of Barry Seal as Cruise eschews his action movie persona of a guy whose totally in control of all that is around him in favor of a more haywire dude who owes his constant avoidance of consequences for his actions to luck stemming external government affairs more than anything else. Cruise has some real fun playing this more frantic character and he's a big reason why American Made is consistently entertaining.

Some interesting editing and a constantly moving story also help keep American Made mostly engaging, though the plot is guilty of some plot points handled in a slipshod manner, most notably a character played by Jesse Plemons who ends up going nowhere. It's also a problem that the pervasively annoying camerawork kept taking me right out of the movie. An uncalled for pervasive use of shaky-cam mars the entire production, as constant pointless zoom-ins distract from the dialogue and on-screen actions and too many times this recurring bit of camerawork just seems to be happening simply for the hell of it, there's no real substantive reason for the film to be shot like this.

Thankfully, the clunky camerawork gets somewhat (though far from entirely) balanced out by some sharp dialogue courtesy of writer Gary Spinelli that helps keep American Made light on his feet. It's true that his writing could definitely stand to be more introspective of the decade and real world events its taking place in, but it feels more like Spinelli is more interested in taking a riotous joyride through this period of American international politics, for better and for worse. That keeps American Made slight for sure, but that also makes it diverting entertainment that, if nothing else, showcases that Tom Cruise has still got it as an actor.