3.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and occasional nudity
By Derrick Bang
The only thing more unsettling
than this film, is the possibility that the truth is even worse.
The notorious Barry Seal’s
jaw-dropping career has long screamed for big-screen treatment, and director
Doug Liman’s American Made wisely
casts the saga as a personality-driven dark comedy that transforms Seal’s
illicit activities into the stuff of overstated burlesque. Tom Cruise is
absolutely perfect for the role, his ear-splitting grin and smug swagger
delivering the charisma that everybody acknowledged was Seal’s greatest asset.
At the same time, there’s no
question that Gary Spinelli’s script — he acknowledges none of the existing
books about Seal — sugar-coats a lot of bad things, time-shifts others, baldly
fabricates events, and outright ignores some of his subject’s worst character
deficiencies. The result would play well on a double-bill with Martin
Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, which
similarly turned the heinous behavior of opportunistic swindler Jordan Belfort
into the stuff of dark farce.
Both films are slick, fast-paced
and thoroughly engaging: no question, a lot of fun to watch. Both also add an
eyebrow-raising layer of sophisticated exhilaration to the illicit behavior of
their respective subjects, as if to suggest they’re modern updates of E.W.
Hornung’s debonair gentleman burglar, A.J. Raffles.
To be fair, Liman and Spinelli
have the added advantage of what could be termed the “Barry Seal mystique”: the
ongoing uncertainty that revolves around the degree to which his activities
were — or weren’t — tolerated, if indeed orchestrated, by various U.S.
intelligence, drug and government entities. No question: This film will be
loved by conspiracy theorists, and particularly by those willing to assume the
worst of the Reagan-era administration.
Spinelli goes all in, accepting
and expanding upon rumors that Seal operated with the full awareness and
cooperation of everything from the CIA to the DEA and those involved with Nancy
Reagan’s “war on drugs.” Along the way, the saga suggests Seal’s intimate
involvement with everybody from Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega, to Bill
Clinton, Oliver North and the Iran/Contra scandal. Even a young George W. Bush
gets a brief but telling moment (with a line of dialogue guaranteed to raise a
smile).
Cruise’s distracting strut aside,
careful attention must be paid to the way Liman constructs his film, most
particularly with respect to the implications of his framing device. The bulk
of the narrative may feel like an intoxicating roller coaster ride, but Liman
carefully maintains an undertone of anxiety and outright danger.
Events begin in 1978, when veteran
TWA pilot Barry has built a small-time smuggling operation involving Cuban
cigars. He’s caught by enigmatic CIA handler Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson),
who — rather than threatening arrest — offers Barry a sleek Aerostar 600 plane
and full-time employment, if he’ll fly to various South American “hot spots”
and take aerial photographs of unspecified “anti-American” activity.
Hey, why the heck not?
And if people keep shooting at
him, well, that’s just part of the thrill.
Barry initially conceals this new
“job” from his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright), introduced as a traditional
stay-at-home mother who doesn’t ask too many questions. That said, this dynamic
is crucial to the unfolding story; Barry adores his wife and family, and Lucy loves
him ... even as she grows suspicious of his increasing evasiveness. Wright
shades the role subtly: Lucy isn’t stupid, and she’s wary of her husband’s
eager-beaver nonchalance ... but she’s nonetheless wholly and firmly devoted.
Eventually, inevitably, Barry’s
flyovers come to the attention of Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejía) and Jorge Ochoa
(Alejandro Edda), soon to become notorious as key players in the Medellín drug
cartel. They make Barry an offer he can’t refuse (under penalty of death):
During his refueling stopovers in Colombia, they’ll load his plane with kilos
of cocaine.
Thus, Barry becomes a CIA
operative while heading south, and a drug smuggler while returning north.
His aerial surveillance photos
greatly impress Schafer and his CIA superiors, who authorize the expansion of
Barry’s operation, by setting him up on hundreds of acres of land — including a
private airfield — just outside the tiny, distressed community of Mena,
Arkansas.
This forces Barry’s hasty
confession to Lucy, particularly when they’re forced to abandon their existing
home — under cover of darkness — for the move to Mena. Although justifiably
furious and frightened, Lucy’s ire is assuaged when Barry dumps a pile of cash
at her feet ... from which point, she just goes along with everything.
Why not? If it’s tolerated by the
CIA, it must be okay. Right?
Things just get crazier. Barry’s
operation becomes so lucrative that he’s forced to hire four additional pilots.
Schafer, in turn, “borrows” some of Barry’s land for an ambitious operation
involving the training of Nicaraguan freedom fighters ... who are smuggled into
the States by Barry and his fellow pilots.
All the while, Barry goes with
the flow ... although Cruise’s features take on a sallow, haunted and exhausted
pallor. Barry’s go-to cheerfulness notwithstanding, the tension and anxiety
can’t help taking a toll.
Even at this point, Liman and
Spinelli retain a tone of high comedy, most particularly with respect to the
ever-expanding bundles of cash that Barry and Lucy soon are unable to store.
Their “solution” will draw a smile from anybody who ever had a job with the
mainstream banking community.
It can’t go on, of course ... but
we can’t help being entranced by the film’s momentum.
While also worrying about the
manner in which Barry’s saga is being told.
Gleeson’s Schafer is Barry’s
equal in every respect: a similarly impetuous go-getter with an ill-advised
tendency to act without regard to consequence. Gleeson shades him as a junior
CIA handler determined to show up his older colleagues; there’s a knowing smirk
in the actor’s gaze, every time Schafer expands upon Barry’s various endeavors.
As Barry admits, at one point,
“Maybe I should have asked more questions.”
That’s the world’s most glaring
understatement, when dealing with an obviously duplicitous snake such as
Schafer.
Caleb Landry Jones is terrific as
Lucy’s slimy, hateful, white-trash younger brother JB: a kid so thoroughly
vile, that Barry looks like a saint by comparison. JB makes a second-act
entrance into Barry’s operations, with results that aren’t terribly surprising.
(It must be noted that JB is a total fabrication on Spinelli’s part ... just as
the actual Barry Seal’s wife was named Deborah, not Lucy.)
Jesse Plemons, well remembered
from the second season of TV’s Fargo,
has an understated but memorable role as Mena’s Sheriff Downing: a man who
isn’t nearly as oblivious as his quiet countenance suggests. Jayma Mays,
equally well remembered from TV’s Glee,
makes the most of her similarly brief appearance as Alabama State Attorney Dana
Sibota.
Liman’s films always boast brisk
and striking editing, and this one’s no exception; Andrew Mondshein keeps
things lively, making ample use of the weird angles employed by César
Charlone’s cinematography (which also displays the grain typical of the story’s
retro setting).
Liman also cheekily plants his
filmmaking technique firmly in the late 1970s and early ’80s, starting when the
modern Universal Studios logo morphs to its appropriately older style.
Christophe Beck’s orchestral underscore takes a back seat to a hilarious
assortment of period-specific pop tunes, some selected for their status as
brief and unlikely hits, and all used as ironic counterpoint: Walter Murphy’s
“A Fifth of Beethoven,” the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Hooked on
Classics,” Talking Heads’ “Slippery People,” Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou,” Hot
Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing” and many, many more.
No question: American Made — great title, just in passing — is a striking and
thoroughly engaging bit of pop-culture satire, with a scathing,
take-no-prisoners view of the U.S. government’s shenanigans in the early 1980s.
And even if the solely authentic aspect of Spinelli’s narrative seems to be the
way it concludes, how are we really to know?
This film’s what-ifs and maybes
are just as enticing as Cruise’s bewitching performance.
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