American Made

Based on true events, American Made follows commercial pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) as he abandons his safe existence to become a drug-runner for notorious Colombian criminals (including Pablo Escobar). It’s clear immediately that director Doug Liman isn’t looking to deliver a terribly innovative or unique motion picture, as American Made boasts the feel and tone of any number of similarly-themed narratives – with the rise-and-fall structure certainly perpetuating the consistently familiar atmosphere. There’s little doubt, then, that the movie benefits substantially from Cruise’s expectedly charismatic performance, as the actor’s rock-solid work as the somewhat unlikable central character anchors the proceedings and effectively holds the viewer’s interest through the more overtly lackluster stretches – although, by that same token, it’s hard to deny that the palpably overlong running time becomes more and more difficult to overlook as time slowly progresses. This is especially true in the film’s misguided and mostly insufferable third act, as scripter Gary Spinelli extends the proceedings well beyond its breaking point by delivering a superfluous and seemingly endless post-script – with the entirely underwhelming nature of this final stretch essentially canceling out the somewhat passable nature of everything preceding it. The result is a sporadically intriguing yet hopelessly slapdash endeavor that could (and should) have been so much better, which is a shame, really, given that American Made does feature one of Cruise’s most interesting performances as of late.

** out of ****