American Made, with Tom Cruise, Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Alejandro Edda. Directed by Doug Liman.
4.5/5
A BANKABLE and watchable star, Tom Cruise does a good job in the real-life story of Barry Seal, a former commercial airlines pilot recruited by the CIA to fly covert missions over Central and South America in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
Initially Seal’s job was just to take photographs of communist guerrilla camps in a specially adapted small plane. This was not without its risks as he was shot at. But his tasks increased to acting as a courier between the CIA and General Manuel Noriega in Panama and smuggling arms to Contra rebels in Nicaragua, with a side-line business of transporting drugs for a Colombian cartel.
When we first meet Seal he is a pilot for TWA. It’s a good job but we get an indication he is bored. He makes some money on the side by smuggling Cuban cigars, which is the foot in the door for the CIA to approach him.
CIA agent Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) sort of blackmails Seal into taking up their offer, but Seal actually relishes the opportunity to get some excitement back into his life.
The CIA sets up a front company for Seal to run, with the ludicrous acronym of IAC (Independent Aviation Consultants). His wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) is kept in the dark initially, and Seal of course is sworn to secrecy.
His flights do not go unnoticed by the Medellin Cartel, who know he works for the CIA and who brazenly strong-arm him into transporting cocaine to the USA on his return flights. He meets all the big names, which now roll off people’s tongues, like Pablo Escobar.
Acting on threat of death mingled with promise of reward, Seal makes a successful drop in Louisiana, but draws the attention of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), requiring him to uproot his family in haste and move them to a safehouse provided by the CIA in Mena, Arkansas.
This becomes his new base of operations, with his own airfield to boot. The CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling as long as he fulfils his missions. Making more money from the drug racket than he can hide in closets and bury in the ground, Seal recruits more pilots to expand his operation.
His tasks escalate to carrying illicit arms for the Contra Rebels in Nicaragua and even transporting the rebels back to the US for covert training in Arkansas. Things get even weirder when the cartel tells Seal they need the arms more than the rebels, who aren’t really interested in fighting anyway, and in exchange the rebels become their drug runners to the US by sea.
You just know Seal’s “good life” can’t last indefinitely and it’s just a matter of when it all comes crashing down.
Even with creative licence and embellishment, it’s an interesting story well told.