



★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆





Sold almost entirely on Tom Cruise’s ability to deliver a cheeky grin, American Made tells the ridiculous true story of Barry Seal, a TWA pilot hired by the CIA to provide reconnaissance footage in the early eighties. His skills are soon noted by the Medellin Cartel, and thus begins an eight-year odyssey of drug smuggling, arms dealing and mountains of cash large enough to shame Scrooge McDuck.



Cruise is back working with director Doug Liman, who – after achieving the impossible by making Hollywood’s ever-youthful hero look genuinely rattled in Edge of Tomorrow – makes a sharp 180-degree turn from their previous team-up. His direction and Gary Spinelli’s script turn the charisma dial up to eleven, giving Cruise that “I’m gonna buzz the tower” smirk we all recognize, but framing it in a frenetic and eye-popping series of increasingly ludicrous capers.



The film is also colour-timed to vibrant excess, but nowhere is the joy and madness more perfectly captured than by a supporting role from Domhnall Gleeson as CIA liaison ‘Schafer’, which proves once and for all that he’s at his best when doing sly, slimy cackling. Caleb Landry Jones also makes a brief but amiably bitter appearance as Seal’s homewrecking brother-in-law.



Occasionally, it is wearing. The whole Wolf of Wall Street vibe is a tad trite (Barry’s growing ambivalence to the jaw-dropping loads of money filling up his house, his preference for reading a book about the rise of Al Capone instead of confronting his problems), and the montages of our lovable pilot enjoying his vast extravagance face the same faults as Scorsese’s epic: we never really feel any ill-effects.



Nowhere is this more apparent than in the treatment of Seal’s wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright). As is now seemingly par-for-the course with this sort of film, she’s almost a footnote. Brought out mainly for eyebrow-arching sequences of the couple having sex in the cockpit mid-flight, her disapproval and shock are played only for laughter. It’s an approach that reflects the films near-refusal to tread into anything remotely dark or upsetting: despite the danger constantly dogging Barry (guns, goons and maybe a little guilt), any danger to the audience’s expectations or sensibilities is severely lacking. It’s a frivolous flight of fancy that provides a great vehicle for Cruise’s shtick and Liman’s swift direction, but nothing more than that. It’s fast to please, but faster to fade.