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American Made

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American Made 's fast-and-loose attitude with its real-life story mirrors the cavalier -- and delightfully watchable -- energy Tom Cruise gives off in the leading role.

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Domhnall Gleeson

Monty "Schafer"

Sarah Wright

Jesse Plemons

Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones

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The makers of the based-on-a-true-story black comedy "American Made" fail to satisfactorily answer one pressing question: why is CIA operative and Colombia drug-runner Barry Seal's story being told as a movie and not a book? What's being shown in this film that couldn't also be expressed in prose? 

In telling the true story of American airplane pilot Barry Seal ( Tom Cruise ), writer Gary Spinelli and director Doug Liman ("Edge of  Tomorrow ," " Jumper ") choose to overstimulate viewers rather than challenge them. They emphasize Barry's charm, the exotic nature of his South American trade routes, and the rapid escalation of events that ultimately led to his downfall. Cruise's smile is, in this context, deployed like a weapon in Liman and Spinelli's overwhelming charm offensive. You don't get a lot of psychological insight into Barry's character, or learn why he was so determined to make more money than he could spend, despite conflicting pressures from Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and the American government to either quit or collude.

But you do get a lot of shots of Cruise grinning from behind aviator glasses in extreme close-ups, many of which are lensed with hand-held digital cameras that show you the wilds of Nicaragua and Colombia through an Instagram-cheap green/yellow filter. "American Made" may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

The alarming pace of Barry's narrative, designed to put Cruise’s charisma front and center, keeps viewers disoriented. It's often hard to understand Barry's motives beyond caricature-broad assumptions about his (lack of) character. In 1977, Barry agrees to fly over South American countries and take photos of suspected communist groups using a spy plane provided by shadowy CIA pencil-pusher Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). Barry is impulsive, or so we're meant to think based on an incident where he wakes up a sleeping co-pilot by abruptly sending a commercial airliner into a nosedive. This scene may explain why Barry grins like a lunatic as he explains to his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) that he'll figure out a way to pay out of pocket for his family's health insurance once he opens an independent shipping company called "IAC" (Get it? IAC - CIA?).

Barry's impetuousness does not, however, explain why he flies so low to land when he takes his photographs. Or why he doesn't immediately reach out to Schafer when he's kidnapped and forced by Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and his Cartel associates to deliver hundreds of pounds of cocaine to the United States. Or why Barry thinks so little of his wife and kids that he packs their Louisiana house up one night without explanation, and moves them to a safe-house in Arkansas. There's character-defining insanity, and then there's "this barely makes sense in the moment when it is happening" crazy. Barry often appears to be the latter kind of nutbar.

There are two types of people in "American Made": the kind that work and the kind that get worked over. It's easy to tell the two apart based on how much screen-time Spinelli and Liman devote to each character. Schafer, for example, is defined by the taunts he suffers from a fellow cubicle drone and his own tendency to over-promise. Schafer doesn't do real work—not in the filmmakers' eyes. The same is true of Escobar and his fellow dealers, who are treated as lawless salesmen of an unsavory product. And don't get me started on JB ( Caleb Landry Jones ), Lucy's lazy, Gremlin-driving, under-age-girl-dating, Confederate-flag-waving redneck brother.

But what about Lucy? She keeps Barry's family together, but her feelings are often taken for granted, even when she calls Barry out for abandoning her suddenly in order to meet up with Schafer. Barry responds by throwing bundles of cash at his wife's feet. The argument, and the scene end just like that, like a smug joke whose punchline might as well be,  There's no problem that a ton of cash can't solve .

"American Made" sells a toxic, shallow, anti-American Dream bill of goods for anybody looking to shake their head about exceptionalism without seriously considering what conditions enable that mentality. Spinelli and Liman don't say anything except,  Look at how far a determined charmer can go if he's greedy and determined enough . They respect Barry too much to be thoughtfully critical of him. And they barely disguise their fascination with broad jokes that tease Barry's team of hard-working good ol' boys and put down everyone else.

Sure, it's important to note that Barry ultimately meets a just end, one that's been prescribed to thousands of other would-be movie gangsters. But you can easily shrug off a little finger-wagging at the end of a movie that treats you to two hours of Tom Cruise charming representatives of every imaginable US institution (they don't call in the Girl Scouts, the Golden Girls or the Hulk-busters, but I'm sure they're in a director's cut). If there is a reason, good or bad, that "American Made" is a movie, it's that you can't be seduced by the star of " Top Gun " in a book. 

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Film credits.

American Made (2017)

Rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.

115 minutes

Tom Cruise as Barry Seal

Domhnall Gleeson as Monty 'Schafer'

Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal

Jesse Plemons as Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones as JB

Lola Kirke as Judy Downing

Jayma Mays as Dana Sibota

• Gary Spinelli

Cinematographer

• César Charlone
• Andrew Mondshein
• Christophe Beck

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American Made Is a Super Cynical Crime Caper

Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal, a drug smuggler who worked for the CIA, in Doug Liman’s surprisingly caustic true-story film.

“It’s not a felony if you’re doing it for the good guys,” blares the tagline on the poster for American Made , Tom Cruise’s freewheeling new caper of a film about the life of Barry Seal. It’s the kind of sentiment Hollywood loves to celebrate—a rebel breaking the rules for an important cause, or even a patriotic one, as Seal did working off the books for the CIA. What better casting could there be for such a role than Cruise, sporting a shaggy ’70s hairdo and a pair of aviators, executing daredevil pilot moves as he flies around Central and South America? It’s Maverick from Top Gun all over again, just a little grimier.

Except Seal’s life was more than a little grimy—he was a grade-A drug smuggler, a favorite of the Medellín Cartel and Pablo Escobar. Whatever CIA benefactors he served were essentially blackmailing him into clandestine ops to serve shady operations like the Iran-Contra affair. The director Doug Liman takes advantage of Cruise in a fascinating way (much as he did with the star in Edge of Tomorrow , the duo’s last collaboration): by poking at his inherent charisma and peeling it back, mocking the very idea of the American cowboy hero at the center of his boisterous but refreshingly cynical tale.

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When we meet Seal, he’s a TWA pilot with a low-level smuggling business on the side, bringing a duffel bag of contraband with him on his flights to score a little extra dough. He’s approached by Monty (Domhnall Gleeson), a CIA agent with a proposition for him: Fly a little propeller plane over rebel bases in Central and South America, take some pictures, and maybe drop off some secret packages for Manuel Noriega, the U.S.-supported military leader in Panama. Good money, off the books, very hush-hush, but all in the name of serving his country.

Seal obliges, and quickly things spiral out of control. Escobar, then on the rise in Colombia, takes note of Seal’s secret flights and demands he start shipping bricks of cocaine on the way back, dumping them out of the air in Louisiana to avoid the DEA. The CIA eventually cottons on but allows the whole thing to continue, as long as Seal can smuggle back some guns for the Contras fighting in Nicaragua. Escobar tolerates that, as long as Seal can operate a whole fleet of cocaine planes to keep his product moving. On and on it goes, with both sides tacitly ignoring the other so that Seal can keep operating extralegally wherever he goes.

Liman and his screenwriter Gary Spinelli tell the tale with all the freewheeling charm required of a caper picture. But American Made never lets the audience forget just how shadily the CIA is behaving throughout, even though Seal is always along for the ride. He has to be—the house of cards he’s built collapses if any of the extralegal organizations he’s working with gets sick of him—and Cruise plays Seal as breezy with just a hint of desperation.

Cruise, one of the last titans of the 1990s who’s still regularly churning out these kinds of star-driven vehicles, already had one flop this year— The Mummy­ —in which he strained credulity as a virile, strapping young adventurer. At 55, Cruise is far older than the man he’s playing (who was 40 at the height of his CIA misadventures, though his life story has been significantly smoothed out and Hollywoodized). But Liman uses Cruise’s age mostly to his advantage, playing up the cracks in Cruise’s façade, especially as Seal tries to convince his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) that his newfound wealth isn’t ill-gotten.

American Made ’s best set pieces revolve around Seal’s obvious lie; it’s quite something to watch the smuggler, covered in blood, cheerfully shoving clothes in a garbage bag and telling Lucy they have to leave home before the sun rises. At another point, a drug run gets interrupted by the DEA and Seal ends up ditching the plan in a small town in Louisiana, getting away from the cops on a children’s bicycle while covered in cocaine. It’s been a while since Cruise made a movie this risky, but American Made is exactly that—it’s a story where Ronald Reagan ends up as the ultimate villain, and Pablo Escobar comes across as the most level-headed of Seal’s bosses.

Liman’s visual panache is lacking at times. The action scenes are often shoddily edited, keeping Seal’s daring flights from feeling genuinely thrilling, and whatever late ’70s/early ’80s look he’s aiming for is absent outside of the hairdos. Cruise, for all his live-wire energy (and he has a lot of it), should probably stop making films that so willfully deny his age, even though he’s talented enough to make it work for two hours. But by the time the movie roared to its shockingly grim, remarkably embittered ending, American Made had won me over. Barry Seal, it turns out, isn’t a hero worth rooting for—but neither are the “good guys” handing him the keys to the plane.

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Review: ‘American Made’ Has Tom Cruise. And Lies, Spies and Coke.

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By Manohla Dargis

• Sept. 28, 2017

The tagline for “American Made,” a breezily, at times woozily rollicking Tom Cruise vehicle, announces that it is “based on a true lie” — though the movie also asserts that it is based on a true story. But who’s quibbling? This is, after all, a Hollywood fantasy starring Mr. Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life smuggler. An enigma with multiple chins, Mr. Seal was apparently known as El Gordo (the Fat Man), a name he may have picked up while working for a drug cartel, the C.I.A. or the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It can be hard to keep tabs on the movie’s Barry, a pilot who racks up lots of miles while serving different masters. When the story opens, he is flying for T.W.A. and bored out of his evidently simple, rather dangerously restless mind. On the job, he amuses himself by flipping a few switches, jerking the controls and abruptly awakening sleeping passengers. His life takes a wild turn when a shady C.I.A. smiler, Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson), makes Barry an offer to help his country or something. Before long, Barry is cozying up to Pablo Escobar and smuggling cocaine and AK-47s across the Americas. Every so often, he drops into Panama to swap packages with that country’s strongman, Manuel Noriega.

This kind of secret world is familiar terrain for the director Doug Liman, who kick-started the “Bourne” spy franchise and directed “ Fair Game ,” a fictional take on some real-world intrigue involving Valerie Plame Wilson , a former C.I.A. officer, and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a onetime diplomat. “American Made,” in its self-amused tone and skittering rhythms, though, is closer to the thriller “ Edge of Tomorrow ,” Mr. Liman and Mr. Cruise’s movie about a man — a wrong-guy, wrong-place type — who dies to live another day only to die (repeat). Mr. Liman likes playing with Mr. Cruise’s persona, say, by messing up that famous smile, and he clearly likes letting his star strut and glide.

Mr. Liman also likes stories about people with secret selves. Maybe it’s an interest he picked up from his father, Arthur L. Liman , who was the chief counsel to the Senate committee during its 1987 Iran-contra investigation. The real Mr. Seal may have played a jaw-droppingly outlandish role in that notorious affair, which, among many other byzantine turns, involved the National Security Council funneling aid to the Nicaraguan contras. The scandal encompassed a vast cast of characters that included President Ronald Reagan and Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North. A few show up in “American Made” either as fictionalized supporting characters or as themselves, smiling and slinking in archival images.

Written by Gary Spinelli, “American Made” goes down easily, especially if you don’t let the historical record with its real-world stakes bother you. Mr. Cruise’s brisk, ingratiating performance — all smiles, hard-charging physicality and beads of sweat — does a lot to soften the edges. But Mr. Liman doesn’t press Mr. Cruise to dig into the character, and the actor mostly hurdles forward in a movie that never gets around to asking what makes Barry run and why. So Barry just runs and he flies and he flies some more, delivering coke and accumulating suitcases of cash that he buries and stashes in closets. (It’s hard not to think that Mr. Cruise signed on to the movie so he could do all his own flying.)

There’s a lot going for “American Made,” which spins like a top and has the visually beguiling, somewhat jaundiced look of a faded old Polaroid. So it’s too bad that Mr. Liman himself didn’t burrow in here as a filmmaker. The real Mr. Seal has been both the main and side attraction in many articles, books, documentaries and hard-core propaganda flicks, including some hinged on the Conspiratorial Industrial Complex which emerged during the Clinton presidency. Mr. Seal was also the subject of “Doublecrossed,” a 1991 HBO docudrama starring Dennis Hopper (which is vaguely amusing if only because Mr. Hopper played a very different coke smuggler in “ Easy Rider ”).

“American Made” encourages and earns your laughter, although it also provokes skepticism, particularly in its attempt to portray Barry as a picaresque hero, one of those rogues tumbling and swaggering from adventure to adventure in a world that’s more corrupt than they are. After all, it asks, how bad can Barry really be, especially given the company he keeps? He doesn’t kill anyone, not exactly, and he’s nice to his wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright Olsen), and their kids. A slightly downscale version of Margot Robbie’s character in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Lucy has a few tangy moments, but she and the kids mostly enhance the visual design, much like the period cars and costumes.

There are moments when it feels as if Mr. Liman’s breakneck pacing is partly an attempt to distract us, to keep us from looking or thinking too hard about the grotesquely corrupt circus parading onscreen. Mr. Cruise’s performance often seems similarly calculated. Barry likes to leap before he thinks: “All this is legal?” he asks, scarcely pausing before plunging into the fray — and Mr. Cruise regularly widens his eyes in what seems to be an effort to convey Barry’s incredulity. It’s dissembling that is about as convincing as the Wolf leering in granny’s nightie. In truth, this Barry is just another ugly American, a happy hustler with a what-me-worry smile and a foot planted on another man’s throat.

American Made Rated R for very bad behavior. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.

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American Made

Where to Watch

Tom Cruise (Barry Seal) Domhnall Gleeson (Monty 'Schafer') Sarah Wright (Lucy Seal) Jesse Plemons (Sheriff Downing) Caleb Landry Jones (JB) Lola Kirke (Judy Downing) Jayma Mays (Dana Sibota) Alejandro Edda (Jorge Ochoa) Benito Martinez (James Rangel) E. Roger Mitchell (Agent Craig McCall)

The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair.

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American Made

• Credits 
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• Image gallery  [69]

All images are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders and/or producers/distributors.

• Connor Trinneer

• Justice Leak

• Robert Farrior
• Frank Licari
• David Silverman
• See all credits
• "Entertaining but familiar (...) As much fun as all this laughing at the past is, it all starts to feel a bit superficial and vaguely monotonous"  Leslie Felperin : The Hollywood Reporter
• "'American Made' is more interesting as a showcase for the dateless elasticity of Cruise’s star power (...) It’s frankly a relief to see Cruise acting this assertively himself again"  Guy Lodge : Variety
• "[It] isn't perfect, but it gives Cruise one of his best roles in a long time (...) That back-and-forth invests 'American Made' with rather more credible peril than has been on display in the last few 'Mission: Impossible' movies."  Mike McCahill : IndieWire
• "[Cruise] is always so tightly controlled that we never truly feel the reptilian survivalism of Barry Seal (...) [Liman’s tone] achieves neither real comedy nor actual tension (...) It’s professional, slick and not terrible"  Jason Solomons : The Wrap
• "The film’s loose period vibe proves diverting and mostly engaging (...) [Cruise's] characteristic hard work and extensive amount of screen time goes a long way towards making 'American Made' work"  Sarah Ward : Screendaily
• "There’s a thrill in knowing it’s real (...) Cruise is as compelling as ever with charm to spare, and this is a ceaselessly entertaining, sometimes tense romp (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"  Alex Godfrey : Empire
• "Barry Seal’s life is fascinating, and complex, to behold; it’s just a shame that 'American Made' finds interest only in the purely superficial (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"  Clarisse Loughrey : The Independent
• Show 2 more reviews
• 50 My Top 10 Movies from 2017 (79)

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Tom Cruise’s ‘Mena’ Pushed Back, Gets New Title

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Tom Cruise ‘s cartel film “ Mena ” is now called “ American Made ,” and is moving from Jan. 6, 2017, to Sept. 29, 2017, Universal Pictures announced on Monday.

“American Made” is the latest collaboration between Cruise and director Doug Liman , who helmed the A-lister in “Edge of Tomorrow.”

“American Made” is based on the real-life exploits of Barry Seal, a hustler for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and pilot unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history, one that almost brought down the Reagan White House through the Iran Contra scandal. Cruise, himself a trained pilot, plays Seal.

Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Cross Creek Pictures’ Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson, Quadrant Pictures’ Doug Davison and Kim Roth are producing. Cross Creek Pictures is financing the film, with Universal handling distribution.

The film generated headlines last year, when a plane carrying crew members crashed on the set in Colombia in September 2015 , killing two people and seriously injuring a third person. Local authorities believe that bad weather caused the twin-engine Aerostar to crash.

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Cruise was in production on the movie at the time of the incident, but was not on the plane. The two people killed were identified as American film pilot Alan David Purwin and Colombian Carlos Berl.

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‘American Made’ Ending Explained: What Happened to Barry Seal?

What happens to Seal after he becomes an informant for the DEA?

The Big Picture

• American Made is a true story about Barry Seal, a commercial pilot who becomes involved with government agencies and drug cartels in the '70s and '80s.
• Tom Cruise delivers a wonderful performance in a movie that initially flew under the radar.
• The film tackles complex themes such as the Iran-Contra affair and the Sandanista government coup in Venezuela.

The 2017 Tom Cruise film American Made is an unlikely true story, to say the least. Cruise plays Barry Seal, a real-life commercial pilot who ends up being recruited by multiple government agencies to infiltrate the South American drug cartels in the late '70s into the early '80s. And his on-again, off-again Southern drawl aside, it's a wonderful performance from the Mission: Impossible star in a movie that flew under the radar upon its initial release. And because the events depicted in American Made are taken directly from a true story, it makes it an even more fascinating story of how a commercial airline pilot ended up dealing with the likes of Pablo Escobar and the dangerous Medellín drug cartel in Colombia. Let's break down an ending that gets a little convoluted as just about every United States agency is involved at some point along with tie-ins to some political events unfolding at the same time including the Iran-Contra affair and the Sandanista government coup in Venezuela.

American Made

The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair.

What Is 'American Made About'?

Directed by Doug Liman , American Made is the true story of Barry Seal who was a commercial pilot for TWA , a now-defunct airline, back in the late 70s when he was busted for smuggling illegal contraband into the United States aboard the jets he was flying. He is then given a choice to face jail time or become an informant for the CIA and Agent Monty Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). He chooses the latter and within just a few months finds himself as a contract CIA employee running guns for the US government and both trafficking and providing intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on the boon of illegal drugs flowing out of South America. He does this while trying to maintain a normal family life with his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) and a couple of kids living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's a harrowing tale of a man who risks his own life and his family to avoid the wrath of the government and the FBI. Given Cruise's fascination with flying in both the Top Gun movies and the Mission Impossible franchise, it turned out to be a perfect fit for the amateur aviator and ultimate thrill seeker .

How Long Had Barry Seal Worked For the CIA in 'American Made'?

Once Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, American involvement in Central and South America grew exponentially as Reagan had promised to take a more hard-line approach to calamitous regimes that were popping up throughout the more unstable countries of the region. Seal began smuggling small amounts of marijuana into the country dating back to 1976. By 1978, he graduated to importing large amounts of cocaine from countries like Ecuador and Honduras.

By the early '80s, Barry Seal was running large amounts of drugs for the infamous Medellín cartel and the most notorious drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar, from Colombia into the United States via the Gulf of Mexico. The DEA became aware of Seal's activity in 1981 and after several years of legal wrangling and indictments, Seal officially started contract work for the Central Intelligence Agency in 1983 until his death in February 1986 at just 46 years of age.

What Leads to Barry Seal's Demise in 'American Made'?

The final scenes in American Made are dedicated to a large cocaine haul that involved Pablo Escobar and several high-ranking members of his cartel. On what turns out to be Barry Seal's final run for the Medellín cartel, he agrees with his handler at the DEA, James Rangel ( Benito Martinez ) to install a hidden camera within the cargo of the fuselage of his plane. This camera captures Seal along with several Medellín lieutenants along with members of the controversial Venezuelan Sandanista government loading palettes of drugs into the plane. The pictures are supposed to be classified, but in the days that follow, they are aired when President Reagan goes on the air to expose what is happening in South America and Barry can be seen prominently in the photos. This is the beginning of the end for Barry as Escobar will surely be targeting him for betraying him which means certain death. He decides to stay away from his family so they won't be in danger when the retaliation comes.

Tom Cruise Made a Blink-and-You-Miss-It Cameo in a Brat Pack Western

Once Escobar knows that Barry has betrayed him and is working for the government, Barry is obviously concerned for his own well-being as Escobar has killed more important men than him for less. He goes into hiding moving from motel to motel on a daily basis to elude what he assumes are Medellín cartel members looking to assassinate him. He makes a series of video journal entries detailing some of his exploits as a sort of memoir. During this time, he is also serving a probation period of 6 months in Arkansas for being found in possession of a warehouse full of drugs and guns. So he spends half of the day in a halfway house and the other half hiding from Escobar's hitmen. Eventually, Barry's luck runs out, and while sitting outside the Arkansas halfway house one afternoon, two Medellín cartel assassins approach him as he is seated in his car and shoot him dead .

'American Made's Satirical CIA Ending and Final Shot Explained

After Barry's cover is blown when Reagan goes on TV and shows the photos of him engaged with the Medellín cartel and Sandanista regime, DEA agents celebrate with a toast of champagne while CIA Agent Monty Schafer frantically walks through the office telling his employees to get rid of anything and everything that has Barry Seal's name on it. They need to erase Barry from ever being involved with any CIA activity. In a tongue-in-cheek final line, Shafer has an epiphany and decides that they will say that the Iranians sold arm the Contras to explain away their involvement with Barry who had also been running guns down to the Contras who were fighting the oppressive and illegitimate Sandinista government in Venezuela. As he posits this idea to a colleague there is a caption below him that reads, "Schafer got a promotion."

This was what started the infamous Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s that brought down Colonel Oliver North . There is also a sequence that describes how, even after Barry's assassination, the CIA continued to use his plane to run guns to the Contras in Venezuela until it was shot down over Nicaragua. The last scene of American Made shows Lucy back behind the counter of a fast food restaurant working the cash register showing that he has come full circle on her wild ride with Barry. Doug Liman emphasizes the final shot of the nice bracelet on her wrist as she extends her arm to give a customer their order. One final ode to the wild ride that was the life of Barry Seal.

American Made is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

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American Made review – maverick Tom Cruise feels the need for speed in flashy thriller

A grinning Cruise is back in Top Gun territory in Doug Liman’s sort-of-true story about a bored pilot who starts working for a Colombian cartel and the CIA

You’d need a heart of stone not to indulge Tom Cruise’s midlife return to Top Gun antics in this flashy, entertaining crime thriller by director Doug Liman, featuring Tom with blindingly toothy grin and sunglasses whizzing around in his light aircraft with US Customs agents riding his tail ( to quote Roger Avary ).

It’s based on the sort-of-true-ish story of a former TWA pilot who in 1984 was arrested for gun-running, money-laundering and carrying drugs in his plane for Colombia’s Medellín Cartel. He cut a deal to incriminate bigger players and claimed he had been involved with government intelligence agencies from the outset – this movie sportingly takes him at his word.

Cruise plays Barry Seal, competent but bored airline pilot and impeccable husband to super-hot wife Lucy (Sarah Wright). He is very excited to be approached by shadowy CIA man Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) and asked to fly a spy plane over Central America to photograph communist insurgents. His roistering antics catch the attention of Pablo Escobar’s drug barons who force him to fly their cocaine to the US. Then he is bullied by Schafer with a new plan: fly guns to Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels, the contras, who are actually more interested in selling the drugs that the Colombians had given them in exchange for these guns – a murky setup which the movie suggests laid the foundations for the Iran-Contra deal.

It’s a salacious war-story picture that leans heavily on the voiceover-flashback style pioneered in GoodFellas, and it reminded me a little of Ted Demme’s tiresome coke history Blow (2001), or more recently something like Todd Phillips’s War Dogs (2016). But the beamingly ingenuous Cruise, whose character is not burdened with any doubts or an inner life, somehow sells it to you.

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• Domhnall Gleeson

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Screen Rant

American made true story: 10 biggest changes to barry seal’s real life.

Several major changes were made in the Tom Cruise movie American Made to the true story of Barry Seal, the notorious drug smuggler and informant.

• American Made took significant liberties with storytelling and altered names for dramatic impact in depicting the true story of Barry Seal's involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s.
• The film portrays certain characters and events that did not exist in Barry Seal's real life, such as his wife Lucy's name being changed to Deborah and the creation of Monty Schafer, a composite of various government officials.
• While American Made suggests a direct connection between Barry Seal and the CIA, there is no evidence to support this claim. Seal consistently denied working for the CIA, and the film's portrayal exaggerates this relationship.

The 2017 film American Made , starring Tom Cruise as Barry Seal , captivated audiences with its stranger-than-fiction drama action about a drug runner for the CIA in an operation known as the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s. The movie featured a chapter of America's dark history and involvement in the drug smuggling of cocaine onto US soil, depicting the true story with action, intrigue, and sometimes dark comedy. However, as in the case of many Hollywood movies, American Made took significant liberties for storytelling and entertainment.

Tom Cruise took on a drastically different role as Barry Seal, highlighting the worlds of aviation, adrenaline addiction, drug smuggling, and government espionage. However, the line between reality and fiction is blurred in this cinematic account. While American Made offered an attention-grabbing narrative, several elements and names were altered or entirely fictionalized for dramatic impact. The film's director, Doug Liman, described the movie as " a fun lie based on a true story ," (via TIME ), signaling that American Made wasn't intended as a documentary about the notorious informant.

RELATED: Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked Worst To Best

10 American Made Changes Barry Seal's Wife's Name

Lucy's real name was deborah seal..

Tom Cruise’s character, Barry Seal, is married to a woman named Lucy, portrayed by Sarah Wright in American Made . However, Barry Seal's real-life wife was named Deborah Seal . Wright plays Seal's foul-mouthed and supportive wife, who throughout the film enjoyed all the extravaganza and rich lifestyle her husband's activities brought to their lives. However, Seal married three times and had five children: a son and a daughter from his first wife, Barbara Bottoms, and three children with his third wife, Deborah Ann DuBois.

9 Monty Schafer Wasn't A Real-Life CIA Agent

Monty is a composite of several different government officials..

Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson impressively plays Monty Schafer, a CIA handler who recruits Barry Seal in a bar. But Monty Schafer never existed in Seal's real life. Monty a composite character in American Made , created to streamline the story and embody various government connections that Seal may have had. Created to represent Barry Seal's questionable connection with the CIA, Monty Schafer serves as the patriot handler who would go to extreme lengths and morally blurry lines to serve his country.

8 The Real Barry Seal Denied Having Worked For The CIA

There's no evidence that seal worked for the cia..

Barry Seal consistently denied having worked directly for the CIA. While there are ongoing conspiracy theories about his involvement with intelligence agencies, Seal himself has never confirmed these claims. American Made , however, paints a much more explicit connection between Seal and the CIA. In Del Hahn's book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal , there is no evidence to support any claims that Seal worked for the CIA . Hahn was, in fact, part of the task force that pursued Seal in the 1980s. He uses several case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal.

7 The Cartel Didn't Kill Barry Seal's Brother-In-Law With A Car Bomb

Barry never actually had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb..

American Made shows a dramatized version of Lucy's brother JB, played by Caleb Landry Jones, who steals money from Barry and ends up attracting the attention of the local authorities. The cartel decides to deal with JB, even though Barry opposes it. JB then gets killed by a car bomb. However, the real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb.

6 The Government Didn't First Take Notice of Barry Seal's Smuggling Cuban Cigars

It was seal's drug trafficking that drew unwanted attention to him..

The government's interest in Barry Seal was claimed to stem from his smuggling of Cuban cigars in American Made . However, this is a significant leap from reality. The real Barry Seal caught the government's attention through his involvement in drug trafficking , not cigar smuggling. His criminal operations were far more severe and complex, including the smuggling of substantial quantities of cocaine and marijuana, and these various criminal activities are what led to his assassination, as explained in American Made's ending .

5 Seal's Involvement With Pablo Escobar And The Ochoa Brothers Was Exaggerated

Seal never met escobar until after his arrest..

The real Barry Seal was not as acquainted with the cartel bosses as American Made suggests, according to Del Hahn's book. Seal didn't meet Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers in person until 1984, after his arrest, while he was working as an informant for the DEA on an undercover operation. American Made portrayed Barry Seal as having a close-knit relationship with drug lord Pablo Escobar. However, in reality, Seal was just one of many pilots involved in drug trafficking for the Medellín cartel, making this portrayal an exaggerated account.

RELATED: What Happened To The Real Jorge Ochoa After American Made

4 Barry Seal Wasn't Recruited By The CIA In A Bar

There's no evidence that suggests the way seal was recruited is accurate..

This is yet another debated myth since no facts remain on whether Barry Seal was working with the CIA or not. However, American Made dramatized Seal’s recruitment into the CIA by showing him being approached in a bar. There is no factual basis for this scene, marking another departure from reality. Even so, Barry Seal was indeed allowed to fly out of the country and return with illegal drugs that the feds made sure never reached their targets. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. Images showed Pablo Escobar with Sandinista government officials and soldiers, who were loading cocaine onto Seal's plane.

3 The Plane Crash Incident Was Dramatized

The crash-landing scene never happened in real life..

In Tom Cruise's American Made , Barry Seal crash-lands a plane in a suburban neighborhood while escaping the DEA, who ordered him to land. Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. Seal hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike , telling the boy, " You never saw me. " There's no evidence that anything similar to this memorable scene ever happened in real life. Tom Cruise has always been known for performing his own stunts in intense action sequences, and American Made was no exception, which explains this moment's inclusion in the film.

2 Seal Was Fired When TWA Learned About His Weapon Trafficking

Seal falsely citied medical leave to explain his absences..

Barry Seal did not quit his job at Trans World Airlines (TWA) out of boredom, choosing to live life on the edge as American Made reveals. In 1974, Seal was fired for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually trafficking weapons. He had been arrested in 1972 by the U.S. Customs Service for trying to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to anti-Castro Cubans via Mexico, according to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal.

1 The Zero-Gravity Love Scene Never Happened

Director doug liman was inspired by his own real-life flight..

The famous American Made love scene with Barry Seal and his wife in zero gravity never happened. Director Doug Liman told Vulture that when preparing for American Made with Cruise, he got the inspiration to create the fictional scene. Liman said, "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right at that moment, I had this inspiration. ... Wouldn't it be fun if they were fooling around in a plane and the plane went into the same kind of parabolic arc, and they got pinned against the ceiling?" The steamy scene was easily one of the most memorable moments in American Mad e .

Where to Watch American Made

Sources: TIME , Vulture , Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

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American Made

• Comedy , Drama

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In Theaters

• September 29, 2017
• Tom Cruise as Barry Seal; Domhnall Gleeson as Schafer; Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal; Alejandro Edda as Jorge Ochoa; Mauricio Mejía as Pablo Escobar; Fredy Yate Escobar as Carlos Ledher; Robert Farrior as Oliver North; Caleb Landry Jones as JB; E. Roger Mitchell as Agent Craig McCall

Home Release Date

• January 2, 2018

Distributor

Movie review.

Cigars. It all started with cigars.

It’s 1978. Hotshot TWA pilot Barry Seal rakes in extra cash on the side smuggling Cuban cigars from Canada to the States.

Until the day Schafer shows up.

Schafer—a CIA agent with a fat file on Barry’s cigar smuggling scheme—nevertheless recognizes the pilot’s undeniable entrepreneurial bent, his willingness to take risks. Barry’s the kind of guy, he figures, who’d jump at the chance to trade his boring commercial pilot job for something a little more jazzy. A little more dangerous. Like, say, flying the world’s fastest prop plane over various countries in Central America and taking spy photos of suspected Communist operatives there. Countries like Nicaragua. El Salvador. Guatemala. Honduras. Columbia.

Barry’s intrigued. Plus there’s that fat file in Schafer’s hand. How can he say no?

And, well, it turns out the word no isn’t really in Barry Seal’s vocabulary anyway. So when he’s abducted in Columbia by ascending drug kingpins Jorge Ochoa, Carlos Ledher and Pablo Escobar, he responds to their “request” for him to fly their white powdery product back to the States in exactly the same way he did to Schafer’s request. After all, how can he say no? They’ve got guns. They’ve got his plane. And they’re willing to pay him $2,000 per kilo of cocaine he flies north.

And Barry can pack a lot of kilos in his plane.

Surveillance on the way down. Drug-running on the way back. Lots of cash for Barry’s pretty, mostly in-the-dark wife, Lucy.

Then Schafer ups the ante: The CIA wants Barry to start carrying illegal Russian AK-47s to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Oh, and to bring some of those freedom fighters back to the U.S. (Barry and his wife have been moved by the CIA to a remote area outside of Mena, Ark.) for training.

How can Barry say no? Especially when he’s making so much money that he’s literally run out of places to stash it.

Plus, what could possibly go wrong for a man who’s spying, running drugs and guns as well as illegally trafficking Nicaraguan rebels?

Positive Elements

Barry Seal doesn’t have much of a moral core to speak of. But by film’s end, his unlikely story does deliver a cautionary message: You can only break the rules and live outside the law so long before the consequences catch up with you.

No, Barry’s not a particularly moral man, but he does love and care for his wife, Lucy, and their three children. He wants to provide for them (and, boy, does he!), and he wants them to be safe. (That last desire gets increasingly difficult for Barry to make good on as the stakes rise violently near the end of the film.) Lucy, for her part, also wants to protect her children—perhaps more so than Barry himself does.

Spiritual Elements

Barry gets detained by a trio of drug lords in Columbia. The main one he deals with is Jorge Ochoa. Jorge brags about the burgeoning cocaine business in Columbia, saying, “Now God above has blessed this country with new riches, Mr. Seal.” When Barry’s nervous about his drug-laden plane’s ability to take off from a short, high-altitude runaway in the Columbian jungle, Jorge gives him a crucifix and says, “Christ will keep you safe.” Barry takes the cross, rubs it (as if for good luck) and hangs it from some controls in his plane’s cockpit.

Throughout the film, the camera occasionally focuses on the cross, perhaps implying that at some point, Barry’s spiritual “good luck charm” may not be potent enough to keep him alive.

We see nuns and priests in the background of a couple of scenes in Columbia. Before the closing credits, we learn that one of Barry’s former associates “found God” and became a preacher.

Sexual Content

Lucy often waits for Barry to get home to have sex with him. She greets him in skimpy negligee once. Several scenes picture them having sex (including one quick-cut montage that shows them making love in three different places). One sex scene takes place while Barry is flying. Movements and noises are explicit in each of these scenes, though nudity is strategically avoided. We also see Barry in bed, shirtless, with his wife lying next to him.

Lucy wears revealing outfits, and we see her in a bikini. Barry likes to moon his family as a joke, and we see his bare rear a couple of times. Lucy grabs his (clothed) backside once.

One of Barry’s fellow TWA coworkers says that when women in hotels see a man in a pilot’s uniform, their “panties come off.” Barry gives pornographic magazines to men in a rough part of Central America to keep them from beating him up and stealing his clothes.

Violent Content

Barry knows no fear behind the stick of his plane. But things get hairy more than once. He tears through the upper canopies of trees in Columbia, barely making it above the forest on takeoff because his plane is so loaded down with coke. In another scene, he zooms into a residential neighborhood to land (trying to avoid DEA agents), and his plane’s wings get shredded before what’s left of the vehicle comes to a halt in someone’s front yard.

Barry is repeatedly shot at by military forces of the governments he’s spying upon. At one point, an engine gets hit and explodes, but Barry just laughs. He also gets beat up badly (mostly offscreen) in Columbia. We later see that he’s lost a tooth, and his face is bloodied as well.

A man is killed when a bomb unexpectedly blows up his car. [ Spoiler Warning ] The government eventually compels Barry to film the Columbian drug dealers he’s been working with (in order to avoid prison). When those men discover they’ve been betrayed, they send assassins to kill Barry. (We see only two men approaching either side of a car that Barry’s sitting in, and we hear that he’s been murdered.)

Crude or Profane Language

About 60 f-words, including at least five combined with “mother.” More than 25 s-words. God’s name is taken in vain at least 15 times, about half of those uses paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is taken in vain once. We hear about 10 instances of “h—,” and four of “d–n.” Other vulgarities include one use of the c-word, and one or two utterances each of “b–ch,” “a–,” “a–hole,” “p-ss,” “p–sies” and “pr–k.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Barry smuggles cocaine for the Columbian cartel on a massive level, transporting so much of the illegal drug that he hires four other pilots to fly missions with him. We learn that Barry shipped billions of dollars of the stuff singlehandedly.

Accordingly, we see myriad plastic wrapped bricks of coke. Barry devises a way to drop them from the bottom of his plane, and we see him “bombing” recipients who wait in Louisiana’s swamps to collect the narcotic parcels. When Barry crawls out of his plane after that rough residential landing, he’s covered with the cocaine that’s accidentally erupted in the process. We also see an older woman with many kilos of cocaine taped to her body after she’s arrested.

Various characters smoke cigarettes and drink different kinds of alcohol throughout the film. We see boxes of the illegal Cuban cigars Barry is smuggling.

Other Negative Elements

Schafer is clearly aware Barry’s smuggling drugs. So he gives Barry detailed maps of all the places other federal agencies will be operating, so that the smuggler can successfully evade them.

Barry is eventually arrested after being pursued by three different federal agencies. The Arkansas attorney general is about to put him away for life when she gets a call from then-governor Bill Clinton (and the former politician’s name is used by her in the film) telling them to release Barry.

Though it’s clear that at least some people in the government know Barry has been smuggling enormous quantities of cocaine, they apparently turn a blind eye to those activities. Simultaneously, we see newsreel footage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan talking about the perils of drug use. The intended message is unmistakeable: that the Reagan administration was deeply hypocritical when it came to the supposed War on Drugs. Even as Nancy admonishes, “Just say no,” Barry’s delivering tons of coke with the CIA’s knowledge and tacit consent.

At one point, Barry says incredulously to Schafer, “All this is legal?” The CIA agent responds, “Yeah, if you’re doing it for the good guys.” Barry’s wife is skeptical at first, but he works hard to convince her, saying, “This is gonna be good for us.” It’s not clear if he ever completely comes clean with her about what’s happening. No wonder when he asks her later, “Do you trust me?” she responds with an emphatic, “No!”

Early in the film, Barry is annoyed that his co-pilot—on a commercial flight—is sleeping. So he takes the plane off autopilot and puts into a dive just to wake his coworker up. People are screaming in the cabin, luggage is falling. But Barry? He’s just laughing.

We hear verbal references to the businesses Barry establishes to launder the vast amounts of cash he’s being paid. We see a man urinating (from behind, nothing critical is shown) in a jail cell. Another person, who thinks he’s about to be shot, wets himself.

If you’re already cynical about alleged government deception and corruption, American Made won’t help matters much.

Oh, Tom Cruise is likeable at times as a brash rogue pilot whose devil-may-care approach to his incredibly risky business certainly makes for a compelling story. And this profanity-laden hard R-rated caper about smuggling—drugs, guns, human beings—would seem outlandishly beyond the realm of reality if it weren’t based at least somewhat on a true story. Which we’re dutifully told at the outset that it is.

But how much truth is actually here? National Review’ s Kyle Smith suggests an answer: not much. “ American Made could have been called American Made-Up . It amounts to an enormously contrived effort by Doug Liman, the son of the Senate’s lead counsel in the Iran-Contra hearings, to reshape the tangle of that scandal into a larkish Tom Cruise adventure. Truth was not an impediment.” Smith even notes that Liman has described the story as a “fun lie.”

But given the amount of profanity, sex and often consequence-free recklessness we see on display here, it might be more accurate to drop the “fun” descriptor and just call it a lie.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Loving Pablo

A journalist strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. A journalist strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. A journalist strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

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Movie Review: Tom Cruise is drug-running maverick in ‘American Made’

Jason Fraley | [email protected]

September 28, 2017, 11:34 PM

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WASHINGTON — In 2014, Doug Liman directed Tom Cruise in “Edge of Tomorrow,” a delightful sci-fi comedy that remains one of the most underrated flicks of the past decade.

This weekend, the duo reunites for the rollicking drug-trafficking flick “American Made.”

Set during the run-up to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, TWA pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is recruited by the CIA to fly secret missions to South America. What starts as mere surveillance evolves into drug running and weapons dealings that find him crossing paths with everyone from Pablo Escobar to Manuel Noriega. This allows Barry and his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) to live lavishly in remote Mena, Arkansas — until it all comes crashing down.

From the opening studio logos, it’s clear this flick isn’t afraid to break some rules and have some self-aware fun. If you liked the “Live, Die, Repeat” antics of “Edge of Tomorrow,” you’ll dig Cruise’s reunion with director Doug Liman, who’s proven he can do comedy (“Swingers”), action (“The Bourne Identity”) and sometimes a little of both (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”).

In “American Made,” Liman is having an absolute blast with the genre, keeping things moving at a “Goodfellas” clip with flashy edits, electric pacing and a funky soundtrack featuring such gems as Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” (1976), a disco take on classical music.

Still, Liman’s best choice is the framing device of Cruise documenting his journey on a VHS camcorder. These clips not only elicit the nostalgia of “sex, lies and videotape” (1989), they provide comic relief after tense moments, just like Matt Damon in “The Martian” (2015). Disguising exposition as direct-address narration, it all builds to a finish we don’t see coming.

Of course, none of it would work without Cruise, who reminds us why he’s been such a box office force. It’s great seeing him back in the cockpit decades after “Top Gun” (1986), only this time as a drug-running “maverick.” His charismatic charm is in top form, offering subtle acting choices for laugh-out-loud moments, particularly as his wife asks him for new appliances.

Speaking of his wife, Wright blends a trio of Scorsese roles: Lorraine Bracco in “Goodfellas” (1990), Sharon Stone in “Casino” (1995) and Margot Robbie in “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). At times, her presence feels mostly limited to sex appeal, but she’s still effective tapping her foot impatiently on the homefront waiting for Cruise to explain his continued absences.

Perhaps her most crucial function is to spark a family subplot with her reckless brother-in-law J.B. (Caleb Landry Jones). Rather than the creepy brother he played in “Get Out” (2017), this time he’s a mullet-wearing redneck who’s a little too careless with cash, drawing the suspicion of a local detective (Jesse Plemons). When it comes to stooges slipping up, it’s all relative(s).

The way this subplot plays out — setting up expectations then subverting them — is just one of the treats by screenwriter Gary Spinelli (“Stash House”). His script never quite goes where you think, proving consistently engaging as Cruise gets deeper and deeper into his covert obligations. It shows that you don’t sell your soul to the devil up front; rather, it’s a gradual negotiation of casual compromises, routine handshakes and “big little lies” of omission.

This theme burns bright in the devil’s grin of Domhnall Gleeson, who is perfect as the covert CIA agent nicknamed “Schafer.” If you’re not already on the Gleeson fan train after his quiet string of impressive credits in “Ex Machina” (2014), “Brooklyn” (2015) and “The Revenant” (2015), you will be after “American Made.” He’s the corrupt federal glue that holds it together.

The end result is a cynical, damning political commentary disguised as action-comedy. The subtext packs plenty of satirical bite, from President Ronald Reagan pardoning a turkey amid Iran-Contra questions, to Nancy Reagan delivering her “just say no” address while the U.S. trades drugs and arms to the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. There’s even brief run-ins with Bill Clinton as governor of Arkansas and George W. Bush as a young pilot.

In the end, it’s really nothing we haven’t seen before with hints of Ray Liotta in “Goodellas” (1990), Johnny Depp in “Blow” (2001) and Bryan Cranston in “The Infiltrator” (2016). But instead of Henry Hill going into witness protection upon his arrest, Barry Seal continually receives promotions within the government. This alone is worth the price of admission for “American Made,” an American-made gem that redefines the phrase “pleasantly surprising.”

Hailed by The Washington Post for “his savantlike ability to name every Best Picture winner in history," Jason Fraley began at WTOP as Morning Drive Writer in 2008, film critic in 2011 and Entertainment Editor in 2014, providing daily arts coverage on-air and online.

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American Made [Movie]

The 2017 film American Made , starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, and Sarah Wright Olsen, is a fictionalized retelling of events in the life of smuggler and pilot Barry Seal, who, during the 1980s, transported drugs and guns between Central America and the United States. The film was written by Gary Spinelli and directed by Doug Liman. Although not filmed in Arkansas, parts of the film are set in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Mena (Polk County) . American Made had an estimated budget of $50 million and was released in the United States on September 29, 2017.

The film opens in 1978 with Cruise playing commercial airline pilot Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, who occasionally smuggles contraband on his flights. At an airport bar, Seal meets fictional CIA agent Monty Schafer (Gleeson), who takes Seal to an airport hangar, where he shows him a new twin-engine airplane and offers him a “covert” job taking aerial photographs of rebel encampments in Central America for a company called Independent Aviation Consultants (IAC). Agent Schafer tells Seal that Seal will be the head of the company. But he warns that if anyone, including Seal’s wife, Lucy (Sarah Wright Olsen), finds out about their “after hours” activities, “that’d be a problem.”

Seal is later shown flying over Guatemala and being fired upon by forces on the ground. At the same time, Agent Schafer is shown taking credit for Seal’s aerial photographs in Washington DC. Seal also flies over El Salvador and is later given a new assignment to deliver intelligence in Panama to and from dictator Manuel Noriega.

In 1980, Seal flies to Colombia, where he is picked up while trying to refuel his airplane and taken to famed drug smuggler Pablo Escobar, who offers to pay Seal “$2,000 per kilo” to help Escobar smuggle his cocaine to Miami, Florida, from a small landing strip in the Colombian jungle. Before Seal can refuse, Escobar has Seal’s plane filled with packages of “product.” Seal tells them that he has a better plan: dropping the drugs from his plane over Louisiana. Escobar later hands Seal a bag of money just as the police invade his house. Seal tries to escape but is arrested. In jail, Seal is bailed out by Agent Schafer, who tells Seal that Seal and his family have to leave Louisiana.

Following the election of Ronald Reagan, Agent Schafer tells Seal that he has a new job for Seal in Mena. Seal moves his family to Arkansas, where he meets with Agent Schafer, who takes him to the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport . Agent Schafer shows Seal a shipment of AK-47s and gives him the intelligence he needs to fly the guns to Central America undetected. Seal hires four other pilots to fly missions for him in which they begin shipping both drugs and guns back and forth from Central America. Agent Schafer informs Seal he now has to smuggle Contras (U.S.-backed rebel forces attempting to overthrow Nicaragua’s left-wing government) to Mena, where they are going to “train.”

Seal’s operation expands as the military takes over part of his airport to train the Contras there. Now a very successful businessman, Seal opens a bank account in Mena and buys his wife a new Cadillac. In 1983, Seal and his pilots nearly get caught flying over the Gulf of Mexico. After learning of Seal’s large bank deposits, FBI agent Craig McCall (E. Roger Mitchell) arrives in Mena, where one bank has given Seal his own vault.

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol forces Seal to land his plane. Seal crash lands in a suburban neighborhood, where he emerges from his plane covered in cocaine but manages to escape. After accepting another job from Escobar, Seal gives his brother-in-law J. B. (Caleb Landry Jones) a passport and a bag of money with orders to disappear. After driving away, J. B.’s car explodes, killing him. Seal is arrested and taken to the Pulaski County Courthouse , where he meets with fictional Attorney General Dana Sibota (Jayma Mays), who lets Seal go after a call from Governor Bill Clinton . Seal is then taken to an airport and flown via private jet to the White House in Washington DC.

In 1984, Seal meets with Oliver North and other officials, who ask Seal to take more photographs, this time for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Seal secretly photographs Escobar and his men loading and unloading his airplane. At home, Seal and his family see his “confidential” photos being shown on television by President Reagan. He is later arrested and sentenced to community service. On December 20, 1985, Seal tapes his confession using a video camera at a motel. On February 19, 1986, Seal makes another video before being assassinated in his car. The film ends with a montage linking Agent Schafer and Seal’s planes to the Iran-Contra Affair. Lucy is seen working at a fast food restaurant with a diamond bracelet on her wrist.

The film diverges wildly from what is known about Barry Seal. The real-life Barry Seal was an overweight former pilot who had served in both the Louisiana National Guard and in the Twentieth Special Forces Group for six years before working for the airline TWA. In the film, actor Tom Cruise plays him as a cocky young pilot not unlike Cruise’s character Maverick in 1986’s Top Gun . Agent Schafer, played by Gleeson, is entirely fictional, as the real Seal began smuggling well before the two characters met in the film. Other events in the film, including Seal landing a plane full of cocaine in a suburban neighborhood, never happened. The real Seal had at least five children, not three, and was married three times. While the extent of his work with the CIA is unknown, Seal was a known drug smuggler who did move his operation to Arkansas. In fact, the film’s original name was Mena , but this was reportedly changed to lessen the emphasis on its connections to Arkansas.

The film opened to more than $16 million its first weekend in the United States and Canada and grossed nearly $135 million worldwide. Most critics praised the film, even as they described it as something of a generic Tom Cruise feature. Director Liman acknowledged that the film did not attempt to be accurate to history and was not meant to be a biopic.

Seal’s exploits have been documented by several writers including Mara Leveritt in her 1999 and 2021 books The Boys on the Tracks and All Quiet at Mena and in Del Hahn’s 2016 book Smuggler’s End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal .

For additional information: “ American Made .” Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3532216/ (accessed May 21, 2022).

Bowden, Bill. “’80s Drug, Gun Saga Remains a Sore Spot.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , October 1, 2017, pp. 1A, 8A.

Leveritt, Mara. All Quiet at Mena: A Reporter’s Memoir of Buried Investigations . Little Rock: Bird Call Press, 2021.

———. “Who’s Afraid of Barry Seal?” Arkansas Times , September 28, 2017. Online at https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/2017/09/28/whos-afraid-of-barry-seal (accessed May 21, 2022).

Cody Lynn Berry Benton, Arkansas

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