Tom Cruise shines in dark comedy American Made

Tom Cruise as Barry Seal in American Made. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

American Made’s Barry Seal (as played by Tom Cruise) embodies the dark side of the American Dream. He is the embodiment of what America can offer to visionaries and dreamers, a life of wealth and fame thanks to hard work, ingenuity, and an otherworldly amount of ambition. It’s the method of attaining those dreams that matters, and it’s the driving force behind director Doug Liman’s pretty excellent dark comedy.

American Made is one of those movies that sports the “based on a true story” slogan, which usually means minor amounts of truth overwhelmed by numerous exaggerations and flat out lies. And this movie is guilty as sin in stretching the truth, with the lies making Barry Seal appear less awful than the real-life counterpart in the early parts of the movie. But even the fantastical aspects don’t mask the truth of what happened completely, as the story itself is pretty close to the insanity depicted in this film. The movie's version of Seal’s life starts with the man as a TWA pilot recruited by the CIA (Domhnall Gleeson plays the mysterious CIA agent who recruits him) to spy on Communist fighters in Latin America in the late '70s. It snowballs into a connection with the Medellin Cartel led Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia), Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda), and Carlos Ledher (Fredy Yate Escobar), and the trafficking of drugs and guns in the early to mid '80s between the US, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Panama. Seal earns an almost impossible amount of money for his effort, enough for his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) and his family can live a lavish life in the boonies of Arkansas, at least until everything inevitably falls apart.

The truth is somewhere in there – Seal definitely had connections with the Medellin Cartel and worked for the DEA – although Liman and writer Gary Spinelli care less about the man and more about how easy it is for a man’s drive to achieve the American Dream can lead him into an impossible situation. The American Dream is connected with exceptionalism, and Seal is an exceptional risk taker and charmer, willing to put passengers in danger to reduce the boredom he suffers as a commercial airline pilot. His desire for a more interesting life puts him into what turns out to be an untenable situation, stuck in the middle of a war between the US government and violent drug runners. Any side he picks is the wrong one; siding with the cartel means he has to evade government officials, while spying for the government makes him a target for Escobar and company. An average man wouldn't end up in that situation; it takes a person with a certain type of genius – the word used most often to describe Seal in American Made – to get stuck that deep into a quagmire.

American Made wouldn't succeed as it does without the dramatic and comedic efforts of Cruise. Although he is a few years too old for the part – to the point that Cruise could be Wright's father – Cruise excels at providing the charisma, charm, and moderate insanity required to sell himself to so many different sides. This is an old school movie star role that requires wattage and the right type of smirk or smile to keep the audience a little far away from thoughts about how truly terrible of a person Seal is. Cruise turns a criminal into a beguiling scoundrel and wins viewers over despite his actions.

That turn in character reflects the surprisingly light tone Spinelli and Liman implement for a movie with this subject matter. Even amid some brutal murders and moments of uncomfortable intensity, American Made finds the humor in the horror and plays it to the hilt. Sequences that could easily be shown as dark are instead mined for a few jokes or an pretty good sight gag involving an impressive amount of cocaine. At least until the end, in which the actual repercussions of Seal's actions come to fruition and the movie pauses for a moment to let the actual horrors sink in. The idea of the American Dream never covers the consequences of unchecked aspirations, making the logical but still shocking ending to this movie more powerful than expected.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 115 minutes

Genre: Biographical

Ask Away

Target audience: Tom Cruise fans and folks who are interested in the cocaine trade.

Take the whole family?: This is an R movie for several justifiable reasons, so just make it a date night.

Theater or Netflix?: It's good enough to deserve a cinema visit.

Academy Awards odds?: I don't think the movie will get that much, but I can see Tom Cruise getting a nomination for Best Actor. This is the best performance Cruise has offered in a long while – a cliché that does apply in this case – and without him this movie wouldn’t be as good as it is.

Watch this as well?: The 2001 movie Blow, featuring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz, a real-life adaptation of another American connected with Pablo Escobar, is pretty interesting and has a strong performance by Depp as George Jung.

Mummy reboot offers few redeeming qualities

Sofia Boutella as the eponymous Mummy in The Mummy. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Any sense of remarkable for the Tom Cruise starring iteration of The Mummy comes from how bad the movie is. Although it isn’t quite interesting enough to qualify as a trainwreck, it is a great example of how bad the screenwriting by committee method can get. There are six people who have their names attached to this thing, and it’s difficult to find areas where more than two of them agreed on a plot point or piece of dialog. The lack of cohesion is stunning and somewhat impressive in how it results in an otherwise unimpressive movie.

The messiness The Mummy exhibits starts with a random text opening quote followed by uninspired voiceover courtesy of a bored Russell Crowe. Then the movie starts in England circa 1127 A.D., then bounces back to present day England, then flashes back yet again to ancient Egypt before stopping for a while in the Middle East in modern times again. The writers in effect created four separate openings to this film, three of would be OK on their own but none of which work in unison with the others. What remains is a good indicator the movie lacks a single direction, a tone it wants to follow and an identity worthy of its predecessors.

What, then, is The Mummy supposed to be? Previous adaptations have worked as a horror film, using the supernatural aspects of the ancient evil to invoke terror. But no one involved in this version seems interested in having this movie be truly scary, and the trace elements of horror that sneak into this movie are subpar. The Mummy character has background comedies tracing back to the days of Abbott and Costello, and this movie does work best using the comedic elements. The writers mine solid material from the moderate silliness of the monster, with one scene involving Cruise, the monster (Sofia Boutella), a few henchman and an awkward entrance by Cruise's love interest (Annabelle Wallis) working as an entertaining example of awkward comedy. Appropriately enough the filmmakers abandon the intentional humor in the middle of the second act, leaving the one enjoyable part of this movie behind.

So what's left is an action-adventure movie, not too far off from the 1999 version, albeit with a slightly darker tone. Except the 2017 Mummy isn't particularly good as an action-adventure flick. The surprisingly sparse action sequences have little vigor and excitement to keep the viewer interested in the fates of Cruise and the far too young for him love interest Wallis. The adventure is limited to England and the early sojourn to the Middle East, making it a less than enthralling globe trotting journey. It's difficult to spend more than $125 million on a movie and come out with something this blasé.

The Mummy becomes remarkably stupid toward the end of the second act with the proper introduction of Crowe's character, the mysterious leader of a secret organization, Dr. Henry Jekyll. That's Henry Jekyll of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame. The reveal is as dumb as it sounds, and the scenario only gets worse when Crowe hams it up when he inevitably transforms into Mr. Hyde. It feels like one of the writers or a few people from Universal decided threw that in there to kick off the Universal monster movie universe, and it comes across as awkwardly as it sounds. It also makes little sense to have a man as volatile as Henry Jekyll be in charge of any secret organization, but that's one of the lesser problems this movie faces.

If there's any single potentially interesting aspect to The Mummy, it's an ending that isn't as saccharine and easy as it could've been. A real sense of tragedy sneaks in for the final few moments that makes sense despite all of the messiness beforehand. But, again, this movie is dumb. It's not smart enough to end at the right time, favoring an ending with even more asinine voiceover and a similarly useless closing scene with Cruise and resurrected co-star Jake Johnson. The Mummy is the type of movie that not only isn't able to do anything right, but doubles down on doing the exact wrong thing.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 110 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Tom Cruise followers and viewers who want to see the start of a monster universe.

Take the whole family?: This'll probably be a little intimidating for kids younger than 8.

Theater or Netflix?: Once again, stay at home and let it come to you.

Is the film sexist?: It is with its treatment of Sofia Boutella's character. Having the monster as a woman is fine and kind of cool, but the filmmakers portray her as a Jezebel creating mayhem for the men around her. That the filmmakers literally bind her at one point is troublesome for a whole host of reasons as well.

Watch this instead?: The 1999 Mummy with Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz isn't great, but the action is solid and the characters are fun enough. It also has one of the cooler haboobs ever depicted in a movie.