Cruise the Gringo

Rating: 8/10 (8 October 2017)

I don't know if Doug Liman only needs to make Tom Cruise movies from now one, but the reverse is probably true: Edge of Tomorrow and now American Made are the two stand-out Cruise movies since he last paired with Spielberg in 2005 (I mean to say that movies that aren't franchises not named Mission Impossible, those 4 and 5 sequels are a lot of fun, but not much beyond the surface entertainment). Barry Seale offers Cruise a thing that feels almost fresh for him in this day and age like... An arc to his chsrzcter (how about that! Development even if its in smaller doses) But it's also impressive how Seals is a genuinely nice and cool-but-not-completely cool films; if this was done 30 years ago, I could picture Burt Reynolds in this kind of character: the wholly charismatic, polite, sometimes befuddled but confident southern gent who is also a criminal bastard.
Will it win awards? Eh no, but it doesn't need to be that either. Maybe its from coming off of the worst Cruise movie in recent memory, The Mummy, but that's not it, or just it. Liman finds an extremely loose shooting style, maybe *too* loose, where his camera is off kilter at many times, but at the same time it isn't incoherent in the mis en scene of it. It has a purpose; we are in the period of late 70s and early 80s chaos but its a chaos that is... Well, sort of half sanctioned by the united states government. We shouldn't be able to believe the story Seale leaves for us - in a typical but fine fashion that does work into the final act of the film in a clever way, or clever-er than usual as far as what Seale is needing to do - but we do, and there's an underlying satire to it all that cant help but make it feel less like another Blow or Infiltrator (though some carry over of DNA is here from that) than a more Southern-baked, less hedonistic Wolf of Wall Street. In other words, it's often wildly funny and twisted, but it is about something very real at the core: American imperialism and exceptionalism.
It tickles me to think of all those people in the American heartland who love Tom Cruise coming to what they think is another fun mindless thriller, and it indicts a hero to many in America, Ronald Reagan, who they either forget or choose to ignore was involved directly snd indirectly in a lot of criminal s***. Its almost like you cant help but like or even love Seale and by extention Cruise: hes not fully a drug trafficker and hes not personally training the Contras. He's the guy that gets your stuff from point A to B. Thank goodness Cruise took this movie on!