Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman teamed up a couple of years ago to make one of the most underappreciated films of the past decade, "Edge of Tomorrow".
They teamed up again in 2017 and knocked it out of the park once more with AMERICAN MADE.
Cruise seems ageless and at his charming best as TWA pilot Barry Seal.
A great pilot who doesn't mind smuggling a few Cuban cigars back on his flights, he's approached by a CIA operative "Schafer" well played by Domhnall Gleason (Ex Machina) to step up his game.
It seems that our government could use some help moving everything from money to guns around between the ever shifting allegiances of South America.
What starts as a small, secretive operation blows up into something much bigger and impressively efficient.
The tale is all the more incredible since its based on Seal's true life story!
Cruise is fantastic yet again as Seal, just as stunned as we are at the amount of cash that his own government is willing to pay to move many pounds of contraband around the world.
Newcomer Sara Wright is terrific as Barry's pure-Texan wife, Lucy.The fact that the film doesn't keep her or the viewer in the dark on any aspect of the operation makes the consequences all the more powerful.
Jesse Plemons (Fargo) is very good as a small town sheriff who's charmed by Barry's arrival in their little city that soon needs more banks to handle all the cash he's bringing in.
Caleb Landry Jones (X MEN First Class, Get Out) is frustratingly perfect as Lucy's white trash brother whose dream car is a Gremlin with a six pack of dollar beer in the seat.
Alejandro Edda is intimidating as drug king Jorge Ochoa and Mauricio Mejia is equally scary as Pablo Escobar.
Liman and Cruise stage the action in South America and Texas with equal style and Seal's forced landing on a neighborhood street is fantastic.
Seal's audacity to work both sides of every fence is equaled by our own government's shifting alliances and selective outrage over drugs and guns, depending on who has them.
There's just enough historical perspective of the Iran/Contra affair, glimpses of Oliver North, Reagan, Carter and the Bushes to provide equal opportunity outrage and head shaking at the nearly non-existent backbone of our ever changing political climate.
Cruise's first R-rated film in nearly a decade, it sees the star again surrounding himself with talented filmmakers and strong actors to tell a great story that's too crazy NOT to be true.
AMERICAN MADE is an enjoyable but darkly realistic thriller that gets an A.
Kommentare