A Above Average Tom Cruise Outing

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2018)

America Made is certainly above average. It is not the best movie in the world but it just a little above average.
Tom Cruise once again did a incredible performance in this movie. The supporting cast also had great acting as well. there were only a few rare moments that the acting was a bit rusty or off. Other than that i don't have much more to say about the acting in this movie other than it was great.
Usually when I review or talk about a movie I don't judge the movie too much on the cinematography but in this movie the cinematography started out good. Not great or anything just your average movie. But then towards the end the cinematography was just plain strange and quite bad in parts. Some parts more than others as well. The camera sometimes quickly zoomed in then out slightly for no reason and it made the movie have a amateur tone to it. Some of the directorial decision i thought were off as well such as when Barry seal (Tom Cruise) got shot and killed. That sort of bleeds into another segment though.
That segment being run time. This movie ran for 1 hour and 55 minutes which is a good length for a movie. I have liked movies to be at least 105 minutes long which equals to 1 hour and 55 minutes but this movie didn't need to go for that long. They could have cut out about 10-15 minutes worth of unnecessary footage and scenes that either didn't progress the story or weren't entirely needed. When Barry Seal got shot and the camera failed (like I was talking about just before) the camera freeze framed because of course it got shot along with Barry. This freeze frame lasted for way too long to the point when I was wondering if it had actually frozen or not. Just little things like that made me dislike this movie a little more.
The writing of this movie now. To be honest i was quite impressed at how smooth the dialogue was. The dialogue was smooth and progressed well and wasn't patchy. With some characters the writing seemed a bit bland and they didn't seem to have much personality at stages. But Barry Seal's (Tom Cruise) dialogue was well crafted and well executed. I think in part this is because of Tom Cruises suburb acting ability.
Movies about drugs are sometimes seem to glorify drugs and make them seem like a cool, good thing. This movie did that a bit. It seemed to make this business look cool and something you can make a lot of money from reasonably easily. vibes like these rub me up the wrong way and make me a little annoyed about why theirs so many of these movies. It makes you not really like the character all that much. It didn't really help with the fact that the main character was a bit rude and arrogant at times which made me really not like him. a character being one or all of these things can work and can make you either root for the character or at the very least like them. But this is one of the movies that shows drugs in a almost good light. If this is to be achieved and executed well there needs to be at least a character or two against it to make it look not all that good and happy. You could argue that it fixed this issue when the people he was trafficking for killed him and JB but by then I think that it was too late. it did have some aspects of the film that were about that but not enough to balance it correctly.
In conclusion this was a decent film. It had great acting and pretty good writing. the way that some themes and issues were displayed in the movie didn't seem right and weren't balanced correctly though. It was a bit above average and for that reason I am going to give it a 7/10.