AMERICAN MADE REVIEW

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

I hadn't heard of American Made until just last month when I saw the poster in one of my local cinemas. In all honesty, I wasn't that interested in seeing it as I thought that it looked like an average comedy. However, after it started receiving mainly positive reviews from both critics and audiences, I decided to give it a watch. American Made proved to be better than I thought it would be and proved me wrong. American Made is a biopic based on Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) who, between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, began working for the CIA as a drug runner. People may wonder how his life was interesting enough to be made into a biopic, however, as those people will soon find out, Seal had a very interesting life. He earned a lot of money and in order to avoid jail time, he approached United States government officials and served as an informant for the DEA. 

Because I hadn't heard of Seal or his story before watching American Made, I had no idea how it was going to end. This made for a very compelling and unpredictable watch. Mainly because it was Cruise playing him, Barry Seal was an interesting and charming character to watch. Despite his previous two films, The Mummy and last year's Jack Reacher: Never Go Back being disappointments, Cruise gives a decent performance. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Cruise was better known for his dramatic roles in films such as Rain Man and Jerry Maguire. I think in both of these films, Cruise gave a very good dramatic performance and, fortunately, that's the same case here for his latest role in 'American Made'. It's not his best performance, however, it's definitely one of his better roles as of late. Solid supporting roles come from Sarah Wright as his wife, Lucy, who always stands by Barry and Domhnall Gleeson as Monty Schafer who is the CIA agent that hires Barry.

The story is told from Barry as he documents his life using a video camera and narrating certain scenes. I think that narration helps the audience to connect with Barry and hear his point of view.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought that American Made was a comedy, however, I was wrong. While there a lot of funny moments throughout, it's more of a drama-based biopic. Director Doug Liman is based known for his action thrillers such as The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Edge Of Tomorrow (which starred Cruise). However, Liman proves that he's capable of making dramas that can be entertaining which also comes from Cruise's charismatic performance as Seal. I think that what I liked most about American Made was how enjoyable it was to watch. Most biopics are serious dramas which can make for a difficult watch. While Seal's story does end tragically, it's not sad. I didn't see Seal's death coming and it was came across as more shocking than upsetting. American Made proves that money may bring you a bigger house, cars and a better life, but, it doesn't bring happiness. Because of his death, his wife, Lucy, was forced to return to her job at KFC and look after their three young children. 

I don't know how much of Seal's story is true, however, I wouldn't be surprised if the writer, Gary Spinelli, made changes in order to create a better film as this happens with most biopic-based films. After looking up Barry Seal online, I soon discovered that Cruise doesn't bare any resemblance to the man he's portraying. Despite giving a solid performance, he was clearly hired for his star power. However, I do understand why the filmmakers made this decision as I doubt anyone would see a film with an actor that looked like Seal.

After being hired by the CIA, he soon begins working for the Medellín Cartel which was a ruthless, highly organized and much-feared Colombian drug cartel. In order to earn more money, Seal became a drug smuggler and began transporting numerous shipments of cocaine from Columbia and Panama to the United States. By successfully achieving this, Seal was earning himself as much as $500k per flight. Despite smuggling drugs into America, Seal isn't portrayed as a bad person, just simply, a flawed person who makes the wrong decisions. He just wants to give his family a good life and have a lot of money (who wouldn't?). He was eventually arrested, however, instead of a 10 years jail time, it was decided that Seal would work with the government as an informant in Columbia and Panama. Unfortunately, after his picture was publicly released, a member of the Cartel, Max Mermelstein was instructed to either kidnap or murder Seal, with a kidnap rewarding in $1m and a murder rewarding in $500k. This lead to Seal's tragic death as he was shot in his car whilst on his way to community service. 

Despite the shockingly sad ending, Doug Liman's American Made is a solid and entertaining biopic featuring Tom Cruise in one of his best dramatic performances.

7/10