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.
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| Barry Seal (Tom Cruise, left) hands an envelope stuffed with cash to Manuel Noriega (Alberto Ospino, right), in exchange for a folder containing unspecified intel: merely one of various questionable activities that Barry undertakes on behalf of the CIA. |
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.
