Great directing and fun

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2018)

American made chooses to go with a kind of light-hearted way to tell the story of drug and arms smuggler and it works incredibly well. This movie gives Tom Cruise one the best roles he's done in a long time. Tom Cruise is perfect in this movie, i is a funny but also fairly dramatic role. When he is smuggling and dealing with the cartel it can be quite funny but also really facinating. I was sitting watching this movie thinking...this really happened, and if this wasn't based on a true story i would never have believed it.
The movie goes for a more Documentary feel, with snap zooms and very tight filming and to be honest I think it works well with the movie. Doug Liman and Tom Cruise work incredibly well together and so the camera work and directing is superb and works incredibly well with the movie'stone and premise
During the third act, the movie begins to become slightly more dramatic with Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and his sentancing. After he takes photos of the cartel for the DEA they are publicly released on TV and th cartel finds out and begins to hunt him. This is the part where the film begins to get more serious which is a good thing and a bad thing. The good being, it provides a tense and enthrallinng ending but at the same time is a big contrast from the rest of the movie. I still enjoyed this part of the movie but I wish the transistion between light-hearted and serious was done a little better.
The ending was done really well. Throughout the movie we are shown "home videos" of Barry Seal talking to the camera about his experience. In these movies it shows the date of the recordings. This shows that these were recorded after the day of his sentencing, initially making the audience think everything will turn out well for him. The movie then at the end shocked me because of Barry being shot and killed by the cartel. In retrospect I should've saw it coming but it surprised me.
The main problem I have with the movie is, it starts off kind of slow. I wasn't really invested until maybe the 30 minute mark. It was a necessary part of the ovie because it shows Barry being approached by the CIA but it could've been made a little bit shorter and a bit more interesting.
Overalll, American Made is a brilliant movie that deserves to be viewed