‘American Made’ Review: A Glib-Talking Cruise and a Lot of Flying

‘American Made’ is another film celebrating the Cruisesque idea of showmanship.

Tom Cruise in American Made. 

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/ManilaInformer)

Tom Cruise can act. But that’s the last thing you expect out of him. Like his Indian counterpart Shah Rukh Khan, Cruise has been peddling his star persona film after film, sometimes even being inconsiderate towards the actor in him. Doug Liman’s American Made is another film in the same vein, celebrating the Cruisesque idea of showmanship. Though American Made claims to be based on a true story, on the real-life character Barry Seal, the film is more interested in mining Cruise’s star facade than his potentially intriguing on-screen character. So we get Cruise bringing his legendary eye-glasses back to life with his toothy grin, and planes caressing the air like a swift concubine.

Refashioning ‘Maverick’ is not the only goal of the film, it seems to be taking a keen interest in selling what’s in fashion these days. So we also get Escobar and the Madellin cartel. And the movie whooshes past, with a glib-talking Cruise, and we get flying, and a lot more flying. When all of it falls in place, there is a strange sense of familiarity around the proceedings.

Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is a bored TWA pilot, finding little pleasure in deviations that include offering harmless sudden jolts to wake up his passengers. His boredom soon gives way to a new life, the wildest one’s mortal imagination can possibly visualise, when Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), recruits him for the CIA to be a secret courier service. But Seal is never contained with little thrills, soon he is clinking his glasses with Escobar. Thus begins his endless flying over the Americas, spying for one, delivering for another. Drugs, arms, and so on. In between, Seal can hardly find space to accommodate the cash that’s flowing in from all quarters.

Liman who teamed up with Cruise to serve one of the most terrific action thrillers of recent years in Edge of Tomorrow (2014), is clearly aware of Cruise’s standing, and he doesn’t let Gary Spinelli’s writing bother the proceedings by keeping things fun, smoothing the rough ends. But this quasi Coen approach is what stops the movie from flying with real wings.

Seal has been given a family consisting of a loving wife (Sarah Wright in an unrewarding role) and kids, a monotony in the beginning to kickstart the crime patrol, but the character never really goes beyond a template, refusing to be anything more than Cruise’s stardust. We never know what makes Seal tick. The enigma of a man who hobnobbed with CIA, General Noriega and the the Medellin Cartel in the grand scheme of institutional corruption never leaps out of the screen.

At the end, a top gun shoots an incredible story to ground, and all we get is a toothy smile to serve a tragedy. Not good, fellas.

(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder)

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