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Flying high

The messed-up life of pilot Barry Seal gets a movie that’s not messed up enough in American Made, an entertaining film that plays it a little too safe. Drug cartels and Iran-Contra are played for laughs in a story that probably shouldn’t have us giggling all that much.

The movie winds up being moderately enjoyable thanks to Tom Cruise sweating it out in the lead role. While his work here doesn’t rival his best, it’s miles better than The Mummy, that shitstorm that put his career on pause this summer. Director Doug Liman, who teamed with Cruise on the sci-fi masterpiece Edge of Tomorrow, rips off Catch Me if You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, Blow, and many more in telling the story of the notorious TWA pilot turned pawn for the CIA.

Inspired by Seal’s true story—and some of the more outlandish stuff depicted in the film actually happened—the movie starts with him grinding out flights for TWA, smuggling the occasional box of Cuban cigars and trying to support a family that includes wife Lucy (Sarah Wright).

During a layover, Seal is approached in a bar by Monty (Domhnall Gleeson), a possible arm for the CIA. After a brief discussion, Barry is given an opportunity to fly arms to South America as an unofficial courier for the U.S.A. (He’s set up with a fake flying company as a front.) The gig soothes the adrenaline junkie in Seal but doesn’t pay enough.

That’s where smuggling drugs for the Medellin drug cartel comes in, something Seal starts doing on the side. The movie depicts Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) as almost fun-loving goofballs, and Seal becomes regular pals with them. Along the way, Seal’s operation expands to include an entire airport in Mena, Arkansas, on property large enough to fit a training ground for the Contras. Seal basically has his hand in everything.

The movie is a whirlwind of activity, but skimpy on some of the details that could make it more than just a silly blast. The likes of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. are reduced to stock news footage—although W. makes a brief appearance, portrayed by an actor.

One element clearly stolen from Goodfellas is the whole “breaking the fourth wall to narrate” tactic. Liman is able to pull this off through a series of videotapes Seal makes when he’s on the run, and we see bits throughout the movie used as story framing devices. It’s a way to help out the viewer with all the different plot threads and time jumps.

Honestly, this story might’ve played better as an HBO or Netflix miniseries than a big motion picture. It feels far too slick for the story, and needed some more meat on the bone. A good 10 hour running time probably wouldn’t even be enough to cover everything Seal got himself into. It feels too massive for a feature length running time.

Cruise brings his reliable movie star prowess to the project, and it can safely be said that, while the movie might get a little messy, it is never boring. That’s because Cruise, as he often does, puts his everything into the role. Gleeson is decent in his fictional representation of the CIA, providing some of the movie’s bigger laughs. Wright does all she can with a role that provides little for her to do.

American Made can’t seem to decide whether it’s an action movie, a dark comedy or a dramatic retelling of a messed-up life. It keeps up the balancing act until its final minutes, where everything comes to a crashing stop on a discordant note. Anybody who knows anything about Seal would know that things would take a dark turn, but the film’s final tonal shift is handled poorly. Still, you can do worse at the theater than seeing a cocaine-coated Cruise paying some kid for a bicycle and riding down the street, with the cocaine leaving a smoky powder trail. American Made has enough going for it not to be a waste of your time, but not enough to consider it anything more than moderately passable entertainment fare. Ω

“Did you know the guy who directed this is the son of the chief counsel for the Senate’s investigation of the iran-Contra Affair?”

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4First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers Angelina Jolie directs the memoir of Loung Ung, who also wrote the screenplay, a Cambodian woman who, as a child, survived the genocide brought upon her country by the Khmer Rouge in the mid ’70s, after the Vietnam War. The result is a triumph for Jolie and Ung, who succeed in telling the story through Ung’s eyes as a child. Young Sareum Srey Moch is a movie miracle as Ung, a happy child the day the Khmer Rouge arrive in her town, marking her dad for death and causing her family to flee into the jungle. Jolie keeps the vantage point of the movie through the eyes of this child, ingeniously filming the landscape around her in a way a child would see it: as something beautiful being invaded by monsters. Moch is required to deliver every emotion in the role, and she delivers them in a way that would seem impossible for a child actress. The movie is terrifying, and it should be. It stands alongside 1984’s The Killing Fields as a fierce, unyielding depiction of this terrible time in human history. (Available for streaming on Netflix during a limited theatrical run.)

4Gerald’s Game Now Netflix chips in on the effort to make us all forget that filmed adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower with this latest King effort, a powerhouse acting job for both Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood. They play Jessie and Gerald, a married couple who have hit tough times. They attempt to rekindle their relationship on a holiday excursion, one that involves her getting handcuffed to the bed. Things go bad, like, really bad, and Jessie winds up in a truly precarious situation that involves starving, dehydrating and hallucinating. The original King novel, of course, finds a way for Gerald to stick around for the whole movie, even after a fatal heart attack, while flashbacks show us other traumas involving Jessie’s dad (Henry Thomas). The movie is, appropriately, hard to watch at times as a hungry dog comes by for a visit and Jessie searches for ways to get her hands out of those cuffs. (Hint: Things get bloody.) This is a career-best performance from Gugino, who carries most of the movie. Greenwood is allowed to get deranged in the role, and he does just that. Visits from a ghostly giant give the movie a supernatural twist, and are legitimately scary. (Available for streaming on Netflix.)

4It The benefit of a movie like Andy Muschietti’s It is that the director and his writers can keep some core themes that worked in the novel but streamline the narrative to make the story work a bit better 30 years after it was written. In that respect, the new It is a triumph. While the 1990 TV miniseries dealt with both the young and older versions of The Loser’s Club, the posse of kids that stand up to evil, the new It stands as Part One, completely dividing the kid and adult stories. There’s also a major time change, with the kids’ story taking place in the late ’80s instead of the ’50s. Thank you, Stranger Things. The core story remains the same: Children in Derry, Maine, have been disappearing for many years, and the film starts with the sad case of Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), a little boy in a yellow rain slicker who follows his paper boat to the sewer drain and makes an unfortunate acquaintance, Pennywise, the sewer-dwelling clown, played as a savage beast by Bill Skarsgard. The kids are great. The standout is Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh. Lillis has that kind of leading-lady-ina-teen-film commanding screen presence. It: Part Two, with the adults, while not official yet, is a certainty.

3Kingsman: The Golden Circle If you thought Kingsman: The Secret Service was a bit over-the-top, and you liked that aspect of it, you’ll be happy to know that things were just getting started with Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar/ Dave Gibbons graphic novel The Secret Service. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is an example of

a sequel pulling out all of the stops, going into severe overkill mode, and holding together quite nicely to deliver a fun time for those who like their movies a little nasty. It’s too long at 141 minutes, and a pug dies, but the action snaps with expert precision, and the cast kicks ass. That cast includes Taron Egerton as Eggsy, Harry Hart’s (Colin Firth) young recruit from the first film. The Kingsman, an underground, sharply dressed spy agency in England, remains in operation. Eggsy has settled down with a royal girlfriend (Hanna Alstrom), and has segued comfortably into the life of a secret agent. Then, things start sucking badly as missiles destroy Kingsman headquarters and strongholds, leaving behind only Eggsy and techy Merlin (Mark Strong). Eggsy and Merlin wind up in America, where they meet the Statesman, secret agent allies doing a similar spying service for the U.S.A. The task force includes Tequila (Channing Tatum), Ginger (Halle Berry) and Champ (Jeff Bridges). Harry, despite apparently dying in the first film, makes a comeback, and the movie is better for it.

2The Limehouse Golem Bill Nighy plays Inspector Kildare, commissioned by Scotland Yard to find the notorious Golem Killer, a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. Based on a 1994 novel that incorporated actual historical figures like Karl Marx, Juan Carlos Medina’s movie is good-looking, and Nighy is a fun sort of cranky Sherlock Holmes. Problem is, the mystery itself isn’t that absorbing, and a side plot involving the murder trial of a local actress (Olivia Cooke) fails to engage. Granted, it is pretty cool that Medina somehow manages to stage a hypothetical scene where Karl Marx commits a very bloody murder. There are a few macabre moments, like that one, that work well. Not enough to make this anything really worth watching. Cooke labors hard in the role of Lizzie Cree, a stage actress in a bad marriage who becomes an object of sympathy for Kildare as he goes through his list of suspects, who include a local actor/playwright, a doctor and, yes, Karl Marx. The movie is weird, but it’s not weird enough, and Nighy’s decent performance is ultimately wasted. (Available for rent and download on iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)

4Mother Writer-director Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, Mother!, is one helluva nutty movie. The film takes unabashedly nasty aim at relationships, the Bible, narcissism, celebrity, art, family, smoking and, oh, yeah, motherhood. By the time it’s over, you might not know exactly what went down, but you know that it landed on the side of cynicism—highly stylized, lunatic, entertaining cynicism. Jennifer Lawrence plays Mother, an apparently kindhearted partner to Him (Javier Bardem). They live in an old-style country house out in the middle of nowhere. Him is a writer, going through some major writer’s block and occasionally speaking of having lost everything in the past to a fire. He has some sort of crystalized object on a stand that he claims empowered him to move on after the fire. It’s in a room nobody is allowed to enter alone. They live a quiet life in their little Eden, Mother preparing meals while Him tortures himself, unable to produce a single word for his next great work. Then, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Man (Ed Harris), soon to be followed by Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), a strange couple who wind up houseguests thanks to Him’s hospitality, and much to the chagrin of Mother. Man and Woman invade Mother’s space, with Man huffing cigarettes and frequently vomiting from illness while Woman swills alcohol and asks Mother extremely personal questions. Later, after a rage-inspired sex session, Mother becomes pregnant, and Him is suddenly fertile with ideas. He writes his next big thing, and their home is besieged by agents, fans, religious zealots, paparazzi, former SNL cast members, policemen, soldiers, terrorists and fire. If there’s a takeaway from Mother!, it’s that Aronofsky doesn’t have the most pleasant attitudes toward celebrity and Sunday school.