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Whether it's on television (Narcos, Breaking Bad, Snowfall) or the big screen (Sicario, Traffic, Blow), audiences across the globe have an unshakable, decades-long love affair with crime dramas centered around the drug trade. Doug Liman's American Made, which tells the story of former Medellin Cartel and CIA drug/weapons smuggler Barry Seal (played in the film by Tom Cruise), is the latest entry into this beloved pop culture movement and despite boasting an interesting premise that's loosely based on a true story, it fails to generate a lot of excitement.
To be clear, American Made isn't a bad film, it's merely a slightly above-average one that fails to stand out in the vast sea of rise-and-fall crime dramas that are out there. It's status as an inessential albeit watchable film can be entirely attributed to the scattershot nature of Gary Spinelli's script. Spinelli's undisciplined, hyperactive approach to storytelling manages to nullify the weight of every event that occurs over the course of its nearly 2-hour runtime. Each plot development comes together so quickly that there isn't any time for suspense or emotional investment in the characters to build. Rapid pacing is an excellent, often effective technique for films in this genre, but when it comes at the expense of any sort of narrative intrigue, it's an obnoxious detriment that prevents you from truly caring about what you're watching.
Spinelli's lazy writing is also apparent in the way he chose to handle the portrayal of Seal. Even as his involvement in the world of illegal smuggling rapidly grows, Seal never becomes a more reprehensible or greedy individual. When the person at the center of a real-life crime saga is portrayed as the same smiling, cocky semi-douche at the climax of the film as they were before they got corrupted by their highly profitable life of crime, you know that the dramatization of said person was poorly-executed. American Made's blatant disregard for basic dramatic buildup and character evolution is something that I've never seen in another crime-based drama before and will more than likely be the only thing I remember about this film 5 years from now.
Even though it never approaches god awful territory, American Made will go down as a pretty substantial fuck-up in my eyes. Turning this dense, almost unbelievable true story into a somewhat entertaining yet completely disjointed and hollow Tom Cruise vehicle was a huge miscalculation from everyone involved in the making of this project. Seal's story could've made for a riveting crime drama or a clever American Dream satire about an opportunistic individual that cashed-in on the greed of the United States government and one of the most powerful drug cartels in the history of the world, but American Made's general indifference towards establishing tension, telling a focused story that provides any sort of meaningful insight on any of the players involved and pointing fingers at the people on both sides of the law that enabled this former commercial airline pilot to become the go-to guy for smuggling contraband in and out of U.S. prevents that from happening. Unless you're a diehard Cruise fan, I wouldn't recommend seeing this until hits VOD/Redbox.
To be clear, American Made isn't a bad film, it's merely a slightly above-average one that fails to stand out in the vast sea of rise-and-fall crime dramas that are out there. It's status as an inessential albeit watchable film can be entirely attributed to the scattershot nature of Gary Spinelli's script. Spinelli's undisciplined, hyperactive approach to storytelling manages to nullify the weight of every event that occurs over the course of its nearly 2-hour runtime. Each plot development comes together so quickly that there isn't any time for suspense or emotional investment in the characters to build. Rapid pacing is an excellent, often effective technique for films in this genre, but when it comes at the expense of any sort of narrative intrigue, it's an obnoxious detriment that prevents you from truly caring about what you're watching.
Spinelli's lazy writing is also apparent in the way he chose to handle the portrayal of Seal. Even as his involvement in the world of illegal smuggling rapidly grows, Seal never becomes a more reprehensible or greedy individual. When the person at the center of a real-life crime saga is portrayed as the same smiling, cocky semi-douche at the climax of the film as they were before they got corrupted by their highly profitable life of crime, you know that the dramatization of said person was poorly-executed. American Made's blatant disregard for basic dramatic buildup and character evolution is something that I've never seen in another crime-based drama before and will more than likely be the only thing I remember about this film 5 years from now.
Even though it never approaches god awful territory, American Made will go down as a pretty substantial fuck-up in my eyes. Turning this dense, almost unbelievable true story into a somewhat entertaining yet completely disjointed and hollow Tom Cruise vehicle was a huge miscalculation from everyone involved in the making of this project. Seal's story could've made for a riveting crime drama or a clever American Dream satire about an opportunistic individual that cashed-in on the greed of the United States government and one of the most powerful drug cartels in the history of the world, but American Made's general indifference towards establishing tension, telling a focused story that provides any sort of meaningful insight on any of the players involved and pointing fingers at the people on both sides of the law that enabled this former commercial airline pilot to become the go-to guy for smuggling contraband in and out of U.S. prevents that from happening. Unless you're a diehard Cruise fan, I wouldn't recommend seeing this until hits VOD/Redbox.
3/5 Stars
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