American Made, Doug Liman's new film about the misadventures of TWA-pilot-cum-CIA-spook-cum-drug-importer-cum-arms-dealer Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), is an intermittently amusing and muddled retelling of the beginnings of the Iran-contra affair, one that never quite settles on a tone.
Barry's bored with bussing folks hither and yon while his copilot catches a few Zs and the autopilot guides them on their way. He makes a bit of extra cash by smuggling Cuban cigars through Canada, a skill that catches the eye of Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), a spook looking for someone who can take photos from an airplane over Central America and figure out where communists are popping up. Wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) disapproves—TWA may be boring but it pays the bills and has a solid insurance plan—but Barry doesn't really care. Soon he's doing flybys over ticked-off commies and looking for ways to earn some scratch on the side to pay for his expanding family.
Enter the Medellin cartel. Curious about the gringo going back and forth, Colombian cocaine kingpins Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) and Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) offer him $2,000 a kilo to get their drugs into the United States. Schafer senses an opportunity, looking the other way while the drugs pour in as long as Barry is willing to run guns to the Contras in Nicaragua.
Soon the Seals have more money than they know what to do with, and they start spending it in the white-trashiest ways possible: a Cadillac with a horn that plays Dixie when you honk it; a big pink addition to their Arkansas home; a miniature golf course in the front yard for the kiddos. But even then there are literally bags and bags of cash, more money than they can spend or launder or even store.
American Made's biggest strength is its cast. Cruise is perfect as the aw-shucks southerner with eyes that just get a little bit wider with surprise every time a new task is dumped into his lap. Gleeson brings a hint of menace to his role as Barry's handler. There's a coldness in his gaze, a hardness in his eyes when the camera focuses in on him as he sizes Barry up—a little squint that makes it clear he could turn the pilot's life inside out with a snap of his finger and not think twice. After all, he's got commie infiltration to stop down south.
Where American Made falters is in its attitude. It's not like Wolf of Wall Street, the sort of flick where we see guys break the law and subvert democracy and come to despise them for their grotesque, boorish excess even as we admit to pining for their lavish lifestyles. We are constantly driven to side with Barry, as when he tries to save his loutish, indolent, idiotic brother-in-law from the depredations of the cartel only to see the favor spit upon. When the young man meets a bad end, we can't really hold it against Barry.
Nor is American Made a moralizing movie about righteous crusaders, one in which lessons are learned and wrongs righted and government officials are punished for their perfidy. It's not about a whistleblower throwing light on an illegal occurrence nor is it about an investigation hauling in bad guys.
It's funny, but not really a comedy. Once or twice, I found myself thinking, "Huh, so, this is what it might look like if Michael Mann made 2006's Miami Vice with a more pronounced sense of humor." Between the labyrinthine plot following the complex and competing interests of various governmental agencies, and the handheld digital film aesthetic adopted by Liman and cinematographer Cesar Charlone—slightly grainy, cutting frequently to close ups that foreground and slightly fisheye the faces in focus—American Made occasionally felt like a through-the-looking glass version of the adventures of Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell), a chronicle of semi-competence and good old fashioned greed.
And maybe that's the point. Hard work done more or less well with illicit riches earned as a reward: What's more American-made than that?