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American Made Review






American Made follows the story of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) a pilot who lands work for the CIA doing reconnaissance missions and simultaneously begins work as a drug runner in the 1980's. I knew pretty much nothing about American Made other than it was directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, The Wall, Jumper and Edge of Tomorrow)  so I was pretty excited as I have liked a lot of his work in the past, especially The Wall and Edge of Tomorrow. To be honest though, Bio-Pics are not my favorite style of movie. I often find them to be too long and have awkward pacing, so when I did find out this was a Bio-Pic I had my doubts. Fortunately, Doug Liman proved me wrong with what I thought to be a great movie. American Made truly surprised and entertained me a lot more than I originally thought it was going to.




Let's take a look at what worked.

 1. Acting- I am always pretty confident in Tom Cruise, he is an actor that works extremely hard and gives 100% all the time. I loved watching him just have fun in this role. He was so charismatic and exciting to watch. The supporting actors in this film were also very good, namely Sarah Wright in her role as Lucy Seal. There wasn't a weak link anywhere. It was a great cast and one that truly came together to help deliver on a pretty fun movie.

 2. Cinematography- I fell in love with how this movie was shot. It was so creative and refreshing. None of it felt static or by the book. Liman choose to use a lot of crash zooms and handheld shots. The movie was a really nice blend of old school film making with modern film making. They created an almost documentary feel, that I just loved. This movie is very big, but the style that Liman chose to use grounded the film and kept it real. He uses a lot of old VHS looking footage to really help sell the time period. 

 3. Entertaining- I was very impressed with the entertainment value of this movie. Liman focuses on getting as much of the story as he can right but he also really wants to just have fun. He chose to use animations to help tell his story and really wanted to make sure he educated the audience but in doing that he created just a really fun and entertaining movie. This movie had really comedic moments and also had some pretty good character moments. It had voice over that fit and didn't feel awkward or choppy. This movie was just crazy and very fun to watch. 








Let's take a look at what didn't work.
1. Tension- American Made was a movie about really serious events that had very serious consequences and at times I wish it dove a little deeper into that side of the story. This film was fun  but it never hit the emotional high for me. I think that is because they really focused on the fun adventure side of Barry Seal and never showed him in moments where he was alone or concerned.  Unfortunately, because of this the film never had it's true roller coaster moments. The emotional highs and lows of this movie all felt pretty even and not that different from the other.
Overall, I had a good time with American Made. It was a well acted and fun movie to watch. It's entertainment value was much higher than I expected it to be. A large part of this is do to Tom Cruise's charismatic and exciting performance. He was supported extremely well both on and off screen. Much like the series of events in the movie, American Made became almost larger than life. However, I just wish I could've seen a little behind the curtain emotionally for the characters. I had a good time with American Made and was very surprised by the movie we got. I am going to give American Made an A-.

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