Fails to Get Off the Ground

Rating: 6/10 (30 September 2017)

At this point is there a person on earth who doesn't already know the CIA was up to some shady s**t in Central America? Those who might still be in the dark about this stuff please do yourself a favor and read "Castles Made of Sand" by Andre Gerolymatos or "A Great Place to Have a War" by Joshua Kulantzick. If you want something a little more specific to this film's subject matter there's "Smuggler's End" by Del Hahn. You can also watch: Bananas (1971), The In-Laws (1979), El Salvador: Another Vietnam (1981), Alsino and the Condor (1982), Under Fire (1983), Latino (1985), Salvador (1986), Romero (1989), Walker (1987), Down Came a Blackbird (1995),Blow (2001), Voces Inocentes (2004), Guatemala: The Secret Files (2008), Harvest of Empire (2012), Princesas Rojas (2013), Escobar: Paradise Lost (2014),the TV show Narcos (2015-present), Room of Bones (2015), Finding Oscar (2016), The Infiltrator (2016) and if that's not enough, the hearings on the Iran-Contra Investigation on Youtube.
All of these options and more would give you a more cogent, compelling and satisfying experience than sitting through American Made; a light, mediocre and curiously smug, bug-eyed view of important historical events. In it a TWA pilot turned CIA stooge makes a little side cash smuggling drugs, guns and people to and from Central America. While doing so, the movie frames the larger collusions and convolutions not as the result of a deeply flawed man sticking his thumbs in various proverbial pies but as an awkward jumble of "and then" filmmaking in spite of him.
Barry (Cruise) fits neatly into the recent crop of true-life protagonists too stupid to realize they're in over their head. He smiles crookedly, trying to hide his intentions under aviator glasses – mostly to the amusement of his CIA handler played by Domhnall Gleeson. He's clearly playing with a bad hand and everyone including the infamous Medellin drug cartel knows it, but damned if they're not entertained by Barry's good 'ol boy braggadocio. He's like a composite of the dudes from War Dogs (2016) only with the serendipity (and obliviousness) of Forrest Gump (1994).
What exactly makes a man like this tick? The movie doesn't really seem that interested in answering that question. Instead it seems more concerned with giving us a history lesson based on Barry's limited first-person perspective and various camera collage techniques that make American Made look like an episode of Arrested Development (2003-Present). This is of course told without wit, irony or the requisite anger needed. One can't help but think that if director Doug Liman brought the same level of ire to this movie that he did in the under-watched Fair Game (2010), American Made would have been a bit more palatable tosomeone.
As it stands however, American Made is for no one. It's a frustratingly mediocre waste of marquee space that's too dense to be entertaining and too cavalier to be worth a good discussion of Cold War foreign policy. It lacks characterization and perspective, leaving only Tom Cruise's boundless charisma to push it past the runway with any alacrity. As much as I'd like to say Cruise pulls it off, American Made as a whole should have stayed grounded for a little while longer.