There are basically two types of Tom Cruise performance and both look quite similar on the surface. In both there are sunglasses, speed and smiles.
In the two neither loses the adrenaline, that would be unthinkable in the Cruise world. But almost all Cruise's most interesting performances ("Magnolia", "Jerry Maguire", "Collateral", "Eyes Wide Shut") have allowed some flaws in that tan body, some dark underneath the elegant boyscout, of emptiness in the soul of this American star of action films that seems eternally young.
Cruise's latest film is the clever and joyful "American Made," a film that looks pretty much like Cruise's big-budget films, before turning everything around and giving way to the less serious Cruise movie we missed.
Considering this, it turns out to be a very good vehicle for the actor, with whom he returns to an airplane cabin 31 years after "Top Gun", and simultaneously reminds us of his natural charisma as a movie actor while subtly deconstructing it.
Doug Liman, the director of "American Made", has proven to have a rare talent for uniting super-famous actors in kinetic kaleidoscopes. He did it with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith, "with Matt Damon in" Bourne Identity "and in his latest movie Cruise," Edge of Tomorrow ", a science fiction story proved this maxim: You can not kill Cruise.
In "American Made," a vaguely truthful story that unfolds in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cruise plays Barry Seal, a pilot of the now-defunct TWA whose smuggling of Cuban cigars catches the attention of INC. A policeman named Shafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches him and offers him a job in which he will take photos for intelligence and make payments to people like the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. "We're building countries down there," says Shafer enthralled.
Seal, watching his plane and ready to turn off the "autopilot" button forever, seizes the opportunity and does not stop trying his good luck. "I tend to say yes before seeing things," he says in a video diary that appears occasionally in the film. "Maybe I should have asked more questions."
Carefree, almost charmingly ignorant of the dangers and questionable ethics he is getting into, Seal soon begins to traffic huge quantities of cocaine back to Arkansas for the Medellin Cartel headed by Pablo Escobar.
Things get tough quickly on both sides of the law. Seal and his family (including his wife played by Sarah Wright Olsen), have more money than they can afford. They run out of closets or holes in the garden to hide the money that comes to them.
CIA missions become bolder as well. Seal becomes a clandestine exporter of AK-47 for the Nicaraguan Contras, which it transports to Arkansas to receive training in a military base. Seal greets them relaxed: "Hello, friends!".
It all becomes an increasingly absurd cycle of drugs, weapons and money supposedly to fight "the enemies of democracy." Ironies are also great, and they reach their peak when Nancy Reagan drives the drug war and asks people to say "no," while her husband's efforts to arm guerrillas secretly push one of the most powerful cartels of the world.
Like several recent films like "War Dogs" and "War Machine", "American Made" is a farce to the international ambitions of United States outlets of control. Here we present the comic and small-scale results of poorly devised policies from the top of the command.
By the way presidents like Jimmy Carter and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton have cameos in American Made.
The film is a tribute and a mockery of American opportunism at the unconcerned decisions of politicians, who so easily and so overwhelmingly benefit (to some extent) a pilot who seeks extreme emotions and can not say no. The high point comes when Seal, who escapes from the DEA, lands emergency in a suburb and escapes on a child's bike, all while bathed in cocaine. Finally a different and rare escape method for Cruise.
"American Made," written by Gary Spinelli, has embellished the story, of course. Seal's life was not as brilliant as Cruise plays. But anyway what life is?
Universal Pictures' "American Made" has a R rating (requires that children under 17 years of age be accompanied by an adult in the United States). The Associated Press rates it with three stars out of four.
In the two neither loses the adrenaline, that would be unthinkable in the Cruise world. But almost all Cruise's most interesting performances ("Magnolia", "Jerry Maguire", "Collateral", "Eyes Wide Shut") have allowed some flaws in that tan body, some dark underneath the elegant boyscout, of emptiness in the soul of this American star of action films that seems eternally young.
Cruise's latest film is the clever and joyful "American Made," a film that looks pretty much like Cruise's big-budget films, before turning everything around and giving way to the less serious Cruise movie we missed.
Considering this, it turns out to be a very good vehicle for the actor, with whom he returns to an airplane cabin 31 years after "Top Gun", and simultaneously reminds us of his natural charisma as a movie actor while subtly deconstructing it.
Doug Liman, the director of "American Made", has proven to have a rare talent for uniting super-famous actors in kinetic kaleidoscopes. He did it with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith, "with Matt Damon in" Bourne Identity "and in his latest movie Cruise," Edge of Tomorrow ", a science fiction story proved this maxim: You can not kill Cruise.
In "American Made," a vaguely truthful story that unfolds in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cruise plays Barry Seal, a pilot of the now-defunct TWA whose smuggling of Cuban cigars catches the attention of INC. A policeman named Shafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches him and offers him a job in which he will take photos for intelligence and make payments to people like the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. "We're building countries down there," says Shafer enthralled.
Seal, watching his plane and ready to turn off the "autopilot" button forever, seizes the opportunity and does not stop trying his good luck. "I tend to say yes before seeing things," he says in a video diary that appears occasionally in the film. "Maybe I should have asked more questions."
Carefree, almost charmingly ignorant of the dangers and questionable ethics he is getting into, Seal soon begins to traffic huge quantities of cocaine back to Arkansas for the Medellin Cartel headed by Pablo Escobar.
Things get tough quickly on both sides of the law. Seal and his family (including his wife played by Sarah Wright Olsen), have more money than they can afford. They run out of closets or holes in the garden to hide the money that comes to them.
CIA missions become bolder as well. Seal becomes a clandestine exporter of AK-47 for the Nicaraguan Contras, which it transports to Arkansas to receive training in a military base. Seal greets them relaxed: "Hello, friends!".
It all becomes an increasingly absurd cycle of drugs, weapons and money supposedly to fight "the enemies of democracy." Ironies are also great, and they reach their peak when Nancy Reagan drives the drug war and asks people to say "no," while her husband's efforts to arm guerrillas secretly push one of the most powerful cartels of the world.
Like several recent films like "War Dogs" and "War Machine", "American Made" is a farce to the international ambitions of United States outlets of control. Here we present the comic and small-scale results of poorly devised policies from the top of the command.
By the way presidents like Jimmy Carter and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton have cameos in American Made.
The film is a tribute and a mockery of American opportunism at the unconcerned decisions of politicians, who so easily and so overwhelmingly benefit (to some extent) a pilot who seeks extreme emotions and can not say no. The high point comes when Seal, who escapes from the DEA, lands emergency in a suburb and escapes on a child's bike, all while bathed in cocaine. Finally a different and rare escape method for Cruise.
"American Made," written by Gary Spinelli, has embellished the story, of course. Seal's life was not as brilliant as Cruise plays. But anyway what life is?
Universal Pictures' "American Made" has a R rating (requires that children under 17 years of age be accompanied by an adult in the United States). The Associated Press rates it with three stars out of four.