Barry Seal: A Creature of the CIA

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2018)

In most biographical accounts of Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal (July 16, 1939 - February 19, 1986), the narrative will describe Barry as a drug runner for the notorious Medellin Cartel of Pablo Escobar in Colombia. "American Made" is successful in probing deeper into Seal's life story to shift the focus to his role in the so-called Iran-Contra Affair of the 1980s.
Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal as a fun-loving American soldier of fortune...with the emphasis on the word "fortune." Seal is apolitical and is always on the lookout for a new angle into making money through his dare-devil flying skills.
Seal became a contract agent for the CIA, taking surveillance photos in Nicaragua at the time when the Sandinistas were the duly elected national government. The film makes it clear that in the early years of the Reagan administration, a secret task force working out of the White House began to actively support a coup of the Nicaraguan government by supplying arms and training the insurgents to topple the Sandinista government.
After the debacle in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, Congress and the American people demanded more accountability from its government in adventurism abroad. But as implied in the film, Ronald Reagan was personally aware of the plot to overthrow the Sandinistas early in his first term in office and long before his Alzheimer's disability could be used as an excuse for him not "remembering."
In its episodic style, the film is rather clumsy as it skips around in time and develops multiple subplots. But it is most successful when it focuses on the political machinations that first bring Barry Seal into the fold of the CIA in illegal arms shipments, until he is eventually betrayed when the clandestine government operation begins to implode. This is an important human story that included good research into Seal's peripatetic life by the filmmakers.
One of the most fascinating parts of the film was the improbable creation of an illegal training base for the training of the Contras on American soil in Mena, Arkansas. Seal served in transporting the rebels to Mena at the behest of the CIA. The filmmakers skillfully weave documentary footage of Oliver North's behind-the-scenes role in the convoluted swap of arms for hostages in the two-pronged goal of freeing Americans being held in Iran while supporting the Contras in Nicaragua. The outlandish training site in Mena was part of the broader secret operation.
The Iran-Contra Affair has never been thoroughly examined by historians, and this film goes a long way in exposing the events as they unfolded in the early 1980s. The only missing part of the story in the film was how the CIA was indirectly responsible for the sale of millions of dollars worth of cocaine to Americans, especially in the beleaguered distinct of south Los Angeles, resulting in the illicit funding of the Contras and the broader addiction of Americans to cocaine. That story was uncovered by investigative reporter Gary Webb and is the subject of a good film entitled "Kill the Messenger. Taken together, "American Made" and "Kill the Messenger" tell a story that is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media or historians. And the deaths of Gary Webb and Barry Seal have an eerie and deeply troubling similarity.