American Made movie review & film summary (2017)

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.