American Made
Overview
American Made is a 2017 biographical crime comedy film directed by Doug Liman, starring Tom Cruise in one of his most energetic and charismatic performances as Barry Seal, a real-life TWA pilot from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the late 1970s, Barry is living a comfortable but restless life when he is approached by a mysterious CIA handler named Schafer, played by Domhnall Gleeson, and recruited to fly covert reconnaissance missions over communist-controlled territories in Central America, photographing guerrilla movements and arms buildups. But Barry, always hungry for more money and excitement, quickly realizes there is far more profit to be made beyond just government work. He begins running guns for the CIA and soon catches the attention of the Medellín Cartel — including Pablo Escobar himself — who recruit him to smuggle cocaine into the United States in massive quantities. Incredibly, Barry manages to simultaneously work for the US government, the DEA, and the most powerful drug cartel in the world, becoming obscenely wealthy in the process. Set against the sweeping backdrop of the Iran-Contra affair and Cold War geopolitics, American Made is a wildly entertaining, darkly comic, and jaw-dropping true story about how one charismatic, reckless, and brilliant man played all sides of history — and nearly got away with it.
