American Made (2017)

Tagline: IMDb lists three, which is greedy, especially as two of them are a bit rubbish. The best is, “Based on a True Lie.”

Premise: Tom Cruise is a passenger jet pilot, who out of the blue is targeted by the CIA to fly spy missions in South America, where he then makes contacts in the drugs world and starts smuggling drugs. This pattern of events escalates and gets less believable as the film goes on.

Execution: I'm going to admit it upfront, I have a real soft spot for Tom Cruise films. I liked Edge of Tomorrow and The Last Samurai. I LOVE Interview with the Vampire. I even rather enjoyed the first Jack Reacher film. So there we are, the skeleton in my film loving closet. It's a metaphorical film loving closet only, and I must stress is in no way akin to any other kinds of closets, metaphorical or not. I don't want anyone to think I'm implying anything other than I hide my Tom Cruise secret away in the closet. I think that's pretty clear.

AmericanMade, then. Well, it has the same director as Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman) which was really rather a lovely surprise of a film. American Made is less entertaining, but by no way is it bad. It just all feels very much like a film you've seen before. Cruise is good in it, and looks bloody good for his age. He takes care of his skin doesn't he. Cruise looks so good for fifty five years old that the hardest part to believe about his marriage in American Made to a woman over two decades his junior, was, err, not the age difference.

All in all the film feels like a montage of cool Cruise moments, but with no real depth or moral exploration. American Made is a celebration of getting what you want, but not necessarily what you deserve. This is no Godfather, it's not even Carlito's Way, but it'll keep your brain and eyes engaged for two hours without challenging it much, provided you ignore the absent morality of it all.

Bedsit it? Good fun, but nothing that's ground breaking, just a well told story. 6/10