AMERICAN MADE : Tuesday 5th September 2017.

I saw 'AMERICAN MADE' earlier this week, and here we have a biographical drama film Directed by Doug Liman whose previous credits include 'Swingers', 'The Bourne Identity', 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith', 'Fair Game', 'Edge of Tomorrow' and the very recently released 'The Wall'. This story surrounds the life and times of Adler Berriman 'Barry' Seal - an American smuggler of drugs and arms, aircraft pilot, dealer, and money launderer who flew flights for the Medellín Cartel, being an organised network of drug suppliers and smugglers originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated throughout the '70's and '80's in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Central America, and the USA, Canada and Europe. At the height of its operations, the Medellín Cartel smuggled tons of cocaine each week into countries all over the world and brought in up to US$60M daily in drug profits. For a time, the Medellín Cartel supplied at least 84% of the United States and 80% of the global cocaine market. Barry Seal was employed by the Cartel as a pilot and drug smuggler transporting numerous shipments of cocaine from Colombia and Panama to the USA and earned as much as US$500K per flight. This is that outrageous albeit true story. Released in the UK and Australia in late August, and not in the US until the end of September, the film has so far met with generally positive Reviews, and cost a budgeted US$80M to bring to the big screen, and has so far grossed US$22M.

So history lesson over, here Barry Seal is portrayed by Tom Cruise a former TWA commercial pilot who flew for the company from 1966 through until 1974. We join Seal as he is flying regular short haul flights across the USA and Canada. He has got to know his routes and his in-flight procedures, and the plane he flies like clockwork, so much so that he almost treats his passengers with a familiar contempt.

One day at an overnight stopover, Seal is seen loading several large boxes of Cuban cigars into his briefcase as he is about to exit the cockpit. On arriving at his hotel he hands the briefcase over to a contact behind the Reception desk. Later that evening the airline crew and enjoying drinks at the hotel bar, where Seal takes a seat at a quiet table. On a neighbouring table he notices a man going through the very briefcase he handed over the Reception desk as short while earlier, and examining the boxes of Cuban cigars. The man calls out Seal's name, and Seal acknowledges warily, before the man takes a seat at his table. The man, who introduces himself as Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) seems to know everything about Seal's history, his family and his cigar smuggling scam. Schafer says that the organisation with whom he works (assumed to be the CIA) could use a pilot of Seal's experience and skills. Schafer says that he works for the IAC (Independent Aviation Contractors), and that if Seal were to join them, it could prove to be very lucrative for him.

Seal accepts, and before you know it he has resigned his long term position with a steady salary and employee benefits with TWA and is running his own business under the guise of IAC. Schafer takes Seal to an aircraft hangar in which is a brand new twin prop jet equipped with cameras for taking aerial photographs. He tasks Seal with flying low clandestine reconnaissance flights over Central and northern South America and photograph the various rebel communist camps that are known to exist in secret forest locations. He does this successfully over numerous occasions taking clear overhead photographs (despite getting shot at during almost every fly over by armed rebel forces) that are very well received by Schafer's superiors.

As time passes, Seal finds himself acting as a courier between Schafer's CIA and General Manuel Noriega (Alberto Ospino) in Panama. Seal repeatedly delivers a brown envelope full of cash for Noriega in exchange for secret dossiers on persons and activities of interest to the US Government. Seal sees himself as just a dependable delivery boy who gets things done no questions asked, and this is just another job, done with the full backing and support of the CIA.

During a refuelling stop over in Colombia, Seal is intercepted and escorted by members of the Medellín Cartel, and taken to meet one Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and his cohorts. They know of Seal's exploits over their neighbouring countries and territories, and seek his co-operation in flying out their cocaine on his return trips to the US, in a deal that is worth US$2,000 for every kilo he transports. Seal quickly does the maths and decides that this is an offer he simply can't refuse. And so Seal accepts their terms and starts flying routine trips back across Louisiana where he dumps each shipment of cocaine out of the plane as it flies low over scrubland into the hands of eagerly awaiting drug smugglers.

This carries on for a couple of years with Seal running trips twice or three times a week for Escobar and the Cartel. The CIA are aware of this and turn a blind eye, but when Seal is arrested and thrown into a Colombian prison as a result of a raid on Escobar's house during one of Seal's stopovers, then Schafer intervenes and throws him a lifeline. Back in the US, Schafer advises Seal that the DEA are hot on his heals and he needs to relocate himself and his family to the Arkansas town of Mena, and quickly, damn quickly, like before sunrise on the morning that he arrives home all beaten and bruised from his time inside. He quickly musters his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) and their young family and get the Hell outta Dodge packing up all their worldly possessions into the family station wagon.

Upon arrival at their new CIA organised homestead on the remote outskirts of Mena, Schafer pulls up and takes Seal for a ride to the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport located on 2,000 acres of remote disused real estate, which Schafer announces now belongs in its entirety to Seal together with everything contained therein. This is to be Seal's business headquarters from where he'll fly largely undetected across to Central and South America in the conduct of his business interests with the CIA. In doing so, and based in sleepy little old Mena, Seal amasses such a fortune in cash that he barely knows where to stash it all. He's livin' the dream, making a very large fortune, and all with the knowledge of the CIA. He has to set up various business in the town through which he can launder his money, and the main bank in Mena give over their vault solely to store Seal's vast quantities of cash money.

In time Schafer asked Seal to run guns to the Nicaraguan right wing Contra rebels which were being secretly funded and backed by the US with both financial and military aid. Seal comes to realise that the Contras were not a serious group of rebels, and so he diverts the guns to the Cartel instead. Meanwhile, Schafer and the CIA set up a Contra training camp at Seal's Mena Airport base, and Seal has to fly in the Contra's many of whom quickly flee when they arrive on American soil. By now Seal has expanded his operations to take in four other pilots and jets, all of whom are on frequent picks up and deliveries and wallowing in cash!

Eventually, the CIA shuts down the training camp as quickly as it was set up. Schafer orders the clearing of all evidence that there was a training camp ever in existence, and leaves Seal to his own devices. At the same time Schafer orders the destruction of all records relating to Seal and his covert activities and all evidence linking Seal to the CIA. Seal smells a rat and orders the clearance of his aircraft hanger base of absolutely everything - cocaine haul, the stash of guns, and bag loads of cash amongst other things. But this exercise proves fruitless as the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, the State Police and other sundry law enforcement authorities including local Sheriff Downing (Jesse Plemons) all descend on Seal in unison in the early hours of one morning. They cuff him and take him into custody. Confronted with the DA and life in prison, the phone rings and its Governor Clinton, who orders the release of Seal from custody, and he's free to go, much to the bewilderment of the DA and all those gathered law enforcement officers.

Subsequently Seal makes a deal with the White House who are after hard evidence that the left wing Nicaraguan Sandinistas are trafficking drugs, and they want Seal to obtain photographic evidence that links the Medellín Cartel to the Sandinistas. Seal flies down to Nicaragua with a cargo plane loaded with two Harley-Davidson motorcycles as gifts for Escobar, and plenty of room to load up with an extra large shipment of drugs and contraband for the return flight home. Unknown to Escobar and the Sandinistas, Seal's flying partner on this mission is snapping secret photographs of the shipments being loaded onto the plane, together with all those involved.

Back home after the dust has settled, Seal and his wife Lucy are sat watching the television news and on comes propaganda reports and photographs released by the White House and in particular one National Security Council member, Oliver North, linking the drug Cartel with the Nicaraguan Sandinista's, and front and centre is Barry Seal's smiling face for all the world to see. Needless to say, upon seeing this Escobar orders a hit on Seal for betraying him and the Cartel, and he is also promptly arrested by the US law enforcement authorities because his face is in the photos implicating him in illegal drugs trafficking.

Appearing in court and facing conviction for drug trafficking, gun running, money laundering and who knows what else, Seal is staring down the barrel of a long jail term. Instead the Judge sentences him to one thousand hours of community service, and he is essentially free to go. With his wife and daughter having moved to Baton Rouge, Seal spends his time looking over his shoulder knowing that there will inevitably be a contract out on him. His community service is to be conducted at a Salvation Army Hostel each evening, the same one, and he spends each night staying in a different hotel in an attempt to lure any would-be assassins off his scent. Eventually, however, Barry Seal is shot to death at the wheel of his car outside that Salvation Army Hostel in February 1986. This brings an abrupt end to the DEA's ongoing investigations, and the CIA seize all the evidence linking themselves to drug smuggling and gun running activities, as was documented in numerous video recordings made by Seal leading up to his death, and contained in the trunk of his car.

This is an amazing true story, an adventure writ large for all the wrong reasons that ultimately nearly toppled the Reagan administration, and cost Barry Seal his life. Tom Cruise puts in a solid and compelling performance as our anti-hero in this piece, and despite his wrong doings you can't help feel an empathy for the character who was just presented with an opportunity and ran with it . . . wholesale, and beyond his wildest dreams, while it lasted. The look and feel of the late '70's and early '80's is faithfully recreated here, and Director Doug Liman weaves an engaging larger than life true story that maintains the interest throughout. But, I would have liked to dig a little more below the surface, as research shows that there was a lot more to Seal's activities than is captured here in the under two hour running time, and, I couldn't help feel that the supporting cast were underdone in terms of their contribution and value to the film. All that said, I enjoyed 'American Made' and I think you will too for Tom Cruise, and for the thrilling true life story, and its far reaching impact, that you couldn't make up if you tried.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-