Hollywood has recently established a trend that involves giving big-name actors roles that would be better suited for up-and-coming actors that the majority of audiences are unaware of. The only problem with casting (often) younger actors that haven't established a name for themselves is that audiences feel less than inclined to pay to see a movie that stars Bob Johnson. Instead, when we hear about a movie starring Tom Cruise, Hollywood suspects that the likelihood of us seeing it dramatically escalates. And you know what? They'd be right. In fact, I have found myself to be a victim of this (admittedly successful) business tactic. My issue with it is that people like me have a greater incentive to see media-attractive movies like American Made that, without the Tom Cruise name in the cast, would have no business making the money they make. These producers think that coding garbage with Tom Cruise charm will blind us to their movie's lameness. Well, you know what, Hollywood? I'm looking right through you, and I'm dangerously underwhelmed.
It's not that American Made was utterly terrible, but it definitely less than impressive. When most movies prove to be unsuccessful, it's because of a flawed narrative or a boring premise. What caused American Made to be so disappointing was the poor execution of an interesting concept. When I read about a Tom Cruise movie focusing on the Iran-Contra Affair, I was intrigued. Dealing with a scandal during the Reagan Administration, it seemed to be a fair assumption that a successful movie could be made due to the interest in story being readily apparent. However, once again, an interesting concept has not lived up to well-deserved expectation.
Once more we see our main character in the present narrating about the series of events that brought him to where he is today. I'm not saying that this is an inherently doomed style of narrative, as it has been a recipe for success on multiple occasions--Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Sin City, or The Wolf of Wall Street to name a few. In the case of American Made, however, it proved to be wildly unnecessary and, in turn, negated many opportunities for suspense audiences could have enjoyed. With virtually every movie needing narration nowadays, it appears that Hollywood perceives audiences to be too dim to allow the imagery and story to speak for itself. And I'm not OK with that.
My main issue with American Made is that it was--in a word--boring. It did start off on an interesting note, but served to be mediocre at best through its remainder. I felt like there were certain angles and points in the story that should have had a lot of focus but didn't, whereas other angles and seemingly unnecessary events filled an ungodly amount of screen time. For example, there's just something wrong about a movie based on a plot intimately involving Pablo Escobar with almost no Pablo Escobar in it. Additionally, the only character I can even remember is Tom Cruise's Barry Seal. I don't know--All I can say for sure is that (my friends and) I left that theater feeling, "...eh..." at best.
For reasons I'm somewhat unaware of, more reviews were positive for this movie than otherwise. In my case, I'd give this movie a 44%, which still feels somewhat generous. Whether I'd recommend seeing this movie at all is still rather debatable, but I can definitely see it being almost entirely forgotten by this time next year. Indeed, I would expect to one day find this in between any and every Nicholas Cage movie in your local
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