American Made (2017)

rating: ****

the story: Based on a true story, an airline pilot finds himself drafted into the Iran-Contra Affair.

review: Tom Cruise was one of the biggest movie stars of the '80s and '90s.  At the turn of the millennium his reputation took a big hit due to his increasingly visible affiliation with the Church of Scientology.  Subsequent film projects had to compete with this reputation, and he's never been as popular since.  All that being said, his career remains fascinating.  He starred in Born on the Fourth of July in 1989, a drama that helped define his career.  Suddenly Cruise wasn't just a hotshot playboy but someone who had something to say about the state of the country, even if he was commenting on the war in Vietnam, already fifteen years in the past by then.  It wasn't until Lions for Lambs in 2007 where he offered a true follow-up.  This was a movie about the increasingly toxic cultural divide that had resulted in part from the Vietnam era. 

And then in 2017, he gave us American Made.  Unlike his earlier efforts, this one doesn't attempt to lecture about what's right or wrong.  The whole point of the movie is that Cruise's character has no idea, and never really cares, about the implications of his actions, which involve the CIA hiring him to take reconnaissance photos in Central America, and then to deliver drugs to revolutionaries in Panama, including future dictator Manuel Noriega, and finally guns to the Contras in Honduras.  Director Doug Liman's whole approach to the movie draws on Cruise's charisma and recent reputation as an action star, and turns all that on its head.  This is a movie to be enjoyed with irony.

Late in the film Cruise has been arrested and charged for his activities, but the sequence feels more like Jack Reacher, in the second movie Never Go Back, explaining to authorities that he's going to walk away from the situation.  For a split second he has to worry about actually facing consequences, going to jail, but then he hears his sentencing as community hours.  But he begins worrying about real ramifications, from something worse than a trial, expecting his car to be laced with explosives, after a car his brother-in-law has just gotten in blows up.  It's really a movie that understands tone, and its message about what these events really signify doesn't need to be hammered as a result, and that's refreshing in an era where everything is delivered with as much bluntness as possible.

Domhnall Gleeson, appearing in just about everything these days and constantly changing up his persona, is Cruise's CIA handler, depicted much as CIA handlers tend to be (similar to how they're depicted in The Hunting Party, for example), but elevated thanks to Gleeson's uncanny ability to be fascinating in the most mundane ways possible (his scene-chewing snarls in Star Wars films notwithstanding).  Jayma Mays plays the prosecutor who thinks she's nailed Cruise; ever since her breakthrough in Red Eye I've been waiting for something worthy to fall in her lap, and this is it.  Caleb Landry Jones picks up another scene-stealing supporting role as the ill-fated brother-in-law.  For me, it was fun seeing Star Trek: Enterprise standout Connor Trinneer in a small role as a young George W. Bush.  His character isn't identified, but Trinneer certainly looks the part, and his scene adds a nice additional irony to the proceedings. 

Given his lowered profile, Cruise can no longer count on his projects landing the way they once did.  More often than not his interesting work is slipping through the cracks.  It'd be a shame if American Made did.