“American Made" High- Flying Fun

By JACKSON MURPHY Staff Writer

Tom Cruise has proven throughout his career that with the right role, he’s money. Cruise was completely miscast in this year’s “Mummy” reboot, and overall, the film flopped. But he’s back as Hollywood’s “Top Gun” action star with “American Made,” re-teaming with “Edge of Tomorrow” director Doug Liman.

This is the story of airline pilot Barry Seal, who went from flying commercially for Trans World Airlines (TWA) to working as a spy for the CIA, to smuggling cocaine and weapons during the Cold War era of the 70s and 80s.

Liman combines multiple cinematic techniques, most of which I’m usually not a big fan of: crazy camera angles, on-screen graphics, free-form editing and both text and voiceover narration, to get the documentary style look he was going after. It’s all a little overwhelming at first, and in lesser hands would have resulted in a disaster. But we soon settle into the film’s unpredictable yet satisfying rhythm.

Seal becomes so good at transporting guns, drugs, information and even soldiers, between the US and a variety of Central American countries, while avoiding authorities, that he starts making more cash than he knows what to do with.

This provides some of the humor of “American Made”,