American Made is a 9/10. It is sleek, smart, and scarier than any horror film of 2017 because it’s mostly true. Watch it for the plane sequences; stay for the uncomfortable realization that the joke is on you.
In the sprawling landscape of 2010s cinema, few films managed to balance high-octane action, historical revisionism, and biting political commentary quite like Doug Liman’s American Made . When audiences searched for , they were expecting a simple Tom Cruise vehicle—perhaps a spy thriller or a Top Gun rehash. What they got instead was a rocket-fueled, shaking-cam biopic that serves as a Rorschach test for the American Dream itself. American Made -2017-
The film’s genius lies in its visual vernacular. Shot in a scuzzy, 16mm-infused, vignette style—complete with fourth-wall-breaking narration and VHS overlays— feels less like a movie and more like a recovered memory drive. Cruise, wearing a prosthetic gut and a perpetual grin, embodies the 1980s "go-getter" energy. He flies planes by day for the government and by night for Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel. The joke, of course, is that by 1982, there is no difference. American Made is a 9/10
The real Barry Seal was much larger in stature (nicknamed "El Gordo") and arguably more calculating than the "aw-shucks" version played by Cruise. Legacy of the Film In the sprawling landscape of 2010s cinema, few
In the pantheon of Tom Cruise’s career, defined by death-defying stunts and sprinting men, American Made (2017) stands as a peculiar and electrifying outlier. Released in the shadow of the Mission: Impossible franchise’s muscular dominance, this film sees Cruise not as the indestructible Ethan Hunt, but as Barry Seal—a smirking, opportunistic, and deeply flawed pilot who accidentally became one of the most pivotal figures in the Iran-Contra affair. Directed by Doug Liman, American Made is a high-octane biopic that plays less like a history lesson and more like a drug-fueled fever dream. It is a film that captures the chaotic energy of the late 1970s and early 1980s, asking the audience to buckle up for a ride where the laws of physics—and the laws of the United States—no longer apply.