Amer­i­can Made

Look­ing to cap­i­talise on the huge suc­cess of their 2014 col­lab­o­ra­tion Edge of Tomor­row, Doug Liman and Tom Cruise team up to tell the crazy true sto­ry of Bar­ry Seal, a TWA pilot coerced by an ambi­tious CIA agent (Domh­nall Glee­son) to fly over Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to mon­i­tor mil­i­tant forces dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s. Buoyed by the thrill of his new secret life, Seal becomes embroiled in drug traf­fick­ing for the Medellin Car­tel. As both worlds become more com­pli­cat­ed, he must find a way to keep him­self and his fam­i­ly safe.

After the scaled-back thrills of recent Aaron Tay­lor-John­son war dra­ma The Wall, Liman brings his sig­na­ture explo­sive visu­als and fre­net­ic edit­ing style back to the fore in Amer­i­can Made. As Cruise sets off on his Wolf of Wall Street-style escapade, where a charis­mat­ic rogue push­es a prof­itable scam to its lim­it, the film’s juke­box sound­track, back­ground news reel footage and Seal’s cam­corder con­fes­sion­al serve as con­stant reminders of the peri­od and setting.

Although it’s most­ly enter­tain­ing see­ing where Seal’s dodgy deal­ings land him, Liman always ensures that we are ground­ed in the real­i­ty of his sit­u­a­tion. You may ques­tion whether you would do any­thing dif­fer­ent­ly giv­en the same choic­es, or what to do when you lit­er­al­ly have more mon­ey than you can spend or store, but the film doesn’t ful­ly answer one fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: why go to all this risk?

For Leonar­do DiCaprio’s Jor­dan Belfort, it was all in the pur­suit of excess; in the sim­i­lar­ly-themed Gold, Matthew McConaughey’s char­ac­ter is look­ing for that elu­sive lucky break. You might argue that an air­plane hangar full of cash is moti­va­tion enough for any­one, but in this con­text it seems a sketchy motive giv­en the dan­ger Seal know­ing­ly places him­self and his fam­i­ly in. With­out a sense of the man, the film plays out like a retro roller coast­er – the ride is enjoy­able enough but we don’t take much away from it.

Then there’s Cruise him­self. Though his South­ern accent is nev­er less than con­vinc­ing, the part nev­er real­ly seems to fit him. If the plot fails in giv­ing Seal a believ­able motive, Cruise lets down the char­ac­ter by not giv­ing him an edge. Even when star­ing down the bar­rel of a machine gun, his per­for­mance lacks des­per­a­tion when the walls inevitably close in around Seal dur­ing the film’s third act.

At least he’s sur­round­ed by an impres­sive sup­port­ing cast. Glee­son is delight­ful­ly smug and slap­pable as the career-mind­ed Fed with no regard for Seal’s wel­fare, while Caleb Landry Jones is ace as the red­neck broth­er-in-law whose brief appear­ance spells trou­ble from the begin­ning. Seal’s wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) is curi­ous­ly writ­ten, how­ev­er, as she express­es lit­tle con­cern over the obvi­ous predica­ment her husband’s actions place them in. A mad­cap cau­tion­ary tale that’s fun while it lasts, then, and fur­ther proof that star pow­er can car­ry a film only so far.