Seal Is Still Unknown To Most Americans...This Will Change That & Everyone Should Know About Seal & Mena

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2017)

f you're like me you want to know more about Barry Seal. Short of conspiracy videos I've not had a lot of success save for Daniel Hopsicker's film which I did find scattered if informative...still heavy with conspiracy stuff yet has a ring of truth. Now we get the big one: The made for your entertainment Hollywood version.
It's definitely good enough it should find an audience, having Tom Cruise paints Seal more as a likable criminal. Seal as pawn playing all sides like they were playing him to which he might as well make some major bank. But, the thing that shouldn't get lost is that this is about a man who really lived and a government agency that absolutely ran amok. Lives were lost and destroyed to which we really don't see that to any extent here. This fairly spit, polished, and filtered version based on the book American Made gives what I would term a peek at the top as it never delves too deeply in favor of pure entertainment..
Is it entertaining to see a man get himself into the most unimaginable situation where you go from driving a bus in the sky for TWA to having so much much money you can't find enough banks or buildings to put store it in? Why yes it is! And the way Tom mugs for a videocassette camera retelling his story is interlaced (Seal may have actually done this for many reasons including his own safety) between scenes of outlandish occurrences and action as Barry Seal's unique criminal empire is pretty much built by The CIA. We know that part of this is absolutely true so it's not very hard to question anything here and it's often better than fiction.
This movie is filmed wonderfully with some action that includes a harrowing short runway takeoff high in the Columbian mountains. They did a fantastic job of filming this and as well as a later controlled ditching. I think it shows that Cruise is a pilot himself as the detail is impressive. I recommend this movie. This is close to the story of the century since the aliens haven't yet landed. Who in The CIA thought this up? Who gave it the green light? Are these people psychopaths? The fact they did and got a colorful character like Seal almost demands further investigation, but for now here's the big-screen sanitized entertaining version and it's pretty good.