American Made film review ★★★★★

Another month, another so-so true-story movie. You know the drill by now: a historical event is deemed incredible enough for the big screen, but loses its wow-factor in translation – the big screen is already full of incredible things, and the need to stick to 'facts' is only an encumbrance. That's not to say that American Made is bad but that it thinks factuality redeems derivativeness. It doesn't. Few people really care about the story of pilot-turned-smuggler Barry Seal, but they can probably recognise a second-rate Goodfellas knock-off when they see one.

That said, Seal is played by Tom Cruise, a movie star unique for never having phoned in a performance. There's not much for Cruise to work with – the fictionalised Seal is venal, a little smarmy, and entirely unreflective – but in a way that's to Cruise's benefit. He plays the character with broad guileless charm, compensating for his over-qualifying good looks (the actual Seal was a doughy schlump) with comic timing and an unexpected gift for looking like a fool.

In the 1970s, Seal was an airline pilot for (the now defunct) Trans World Airlines. He was tempted away from his job by the CIA, who wanted someone to take low-altitude photos of South American militias. Operating under a dummy company (the cheekily named International Aviation Consultants – 'IAC'), Seal's forays across the border were noticed by Columbia's uber-violent Medellín Cartel, one of whose founding members was Pablo Escobar. Escobar & co. wanted Seal to start schlepping cocaine back to Miami, and Seal cheerfully agreed.

Eventually, Seal had more pies than he could safely stick his fingers into. As well as working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, he smuggled CIA machine-guns (meant for militants) to the Cartel, and smuggled Contra militia-men back to Arkansas (where the CIA had set up a training facility on his property). He was making more money than he could launder. In his house, dollar-stuffed bags were crammed into every available cranny.

Sheer quantities of physical money is always the least engaging aspect of films like these, but director Doug Liman is more interested in loot than motivation or psychological consequence. Unlike Goodfellas, which really gave a sense of how intoxicating crime could be, American Made takes for granted that Seal would so eagerly place his safety (and the safety of his family) on the line. Who knows: perhaps the real Seal actually had no self-doubt, no guilt, no angst. But then why make a movie about him?

In any case, Cruise does a good job with what he's given. He has the ability to make blankness convincing and, at times, amusing.