Review of American Made (2017) by Connor S — 06 Nov 2017

The other 70s biopic that weekend is a mostly accurate retelling of the life of smuggler Barry Seal and his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Directed by Doug Liman, whose father was the chief counsel for the scandal's Senate hearings, American Made is an irreverent take on one of America's many foreign policy blunders.

While I can't stand Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible), even I have to admit he does a great job as Seal. After all, he is, as Vox would put is, playing himself: ageless asshole everybody keeps insisting is a good person despite all evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, he does such a good job that he ends up undercutting the film's message. Even though the movie straight up tells you Barry Seal was not a good person and did the wrong thing, I'm afraid most of the audience will end up seeing him as the victim thanks to Tom Cruise's charisma. In fact, this movie's big blind spot is the real victims of Seal's wacky life. It's particularly jarring to see the Contras depicted as harmless buffoons, when in reality they were a vicious terrorist group who butchered campesinos and burned Amerindian villages to the ground.

Human cost aside, American Made's comedic tone does an otherwise stellar job critiquing the absurdity of Iran-Contra. Reagan's televised announcements about the state of affairs in Central America and the War on Drugs now seem like bizarre propaganda videos in retrospect. A meta joke about maps reveals how little the US government understands its neighbors to the south. All the while, Seal's misadventures quickly spiral out of control. At first, the pace moves too quickly, covering in 10 minutes what takes Narcos an entire episode, but the filmmakers manage to get the pace under control by the end of the first half. Also, the movie attempts a mockumentary style, but it mostly doesn't work. We get a shaky and mobile camera throughout the movie that just seems amateurish. This approach doesn't pay off until the end, where we get an excellent 70s themed end credit sequence. The final line, in its sheer insanity, is the perfect note to end on. I just hope the message doesn't fly over audience's heads like one of Barry Seal's planes.