"American Made": Oddly Made

Some film adaptations go the extra mile to recreate the vibe and appearance of a certain time period.  This film tried too hard to do this. 


"American Made" finds Tom Cruise out of his typical action-blockbuster movie roles.  Instead, Cruise portrays real-life CIA pilot Barry Seal.  Seal flew secret missions for the U.S. government in the 1970s, then got caught up in some shady business ventures to make some money on the side.  The story is really interesting and a bit disturbing.  In fact, the greatest aspect of this film by far is its narrative.


The acting in this film is nothing special.  Despite Cruise having an accent and playing an anti-hero, he's still very similar to the character he plays in other films.  Even though the acting in this biography is on-par or a little worse than other films in this genre, I would still consider it one of the high points of the film.


The problems of "American Made" are almost all related to the filmmaking.  Since most of the events in this film actually happened, the directing takes on a more casual approach to give the film some more realism.  One of the techniques this film uses is shaky cam, which is when the camera is shooting on an unstable base and wobbles a little bit.  This did help with some realism during some intense scenes, but it became a little annoying during the scenes when characters are just talking.  There are also some random changes in focus and awkward zooms that I found over-exaggerated yet pointless.  There are many other conventional techniques that this film could have used to better express the same concepts.


Personally, my greatest issue was the look of the film.  "American Made" tries to achieve a vintage style reminiscent of the era it came from, but a lot of the shots come off as off-kilter and ugly-looking.  The film has a color palette that often overpowers the shot, which makes the frame look oversaturated.  Sometimes the picture looks very blue, other times it's yellow.  The film probably changes its color once every minute on average.  There are scenes where the color will change two or three times.  It's distracting and doesn't improve the experience in any way beyond trying something new.


There are some good shots in this film.  There are a wide variety of locations that make some parts of the film seem gorgeous.  However, this is ruined by the overpowering color tints and some overexposed lighting.  Maybe the footage was messed up and this was the only way to save what was already recorded, but it seems like an intentional choice.


Finally, I thought this film also suffered from a few unlikable characters, notably JB.  It's fine to have despicable characters in a movie until they become irritating.  Then, these actors bring the film as a whole down because not many audience members want to see something annoying and infuriating on-screen, especially if there's no point or message behind it.  I understand that this is how the story goes, but they didn't need to focus on these obnoxious moments.


Overall, this film is a very mixed-bag.  The filmmaking in "American Made" seemed experimental in a bad way, and I still think the look is poor for a studio release this large.  However, every person I've talked to said they enjoyed the film.  The story in this film is so interesting that I have to recommend it to people interested in true-stories of wealth and corruption.  The people that will have a distaste for this film are the ones that are bothered by the filmmaking; I didn't even notice many of the flaws until my second viewing.  The history this film covers is so good, I just wish the technical aspects could match it a bit better.