American Made (film)

In 1978, Baton Rouge pilot Barry Seal, who flies commercial jets for TWA, is recruited by a CIA case officer calling himself Monty Schafer. He asks Seal, who has been smuggling Cuban cigars into the country via Canada, to fly clandestine reconnaissance missions for the CIA over Central America using a small plane with cameras installed. Seal tells his wife Lucy he's still with TWA.

In the 1980s, Schafer asks Seal to start acting as a courier between the CIA and General Noriega in Panama. During a mission, the Medellín Cartel picks Seal up and asks him to fly cocaine on his return flights to the United States. Seal accepts and starts flying the cartel's cocaine to Louisiana, delivering the drugs via airdrop in the countryside instead of landing at an airport. The CIA turns a blind eye to the drug smuggling, but the DEA tracks Seal down. To avoid the authorities, Seal and his family must relocate to the remote town of Mena, Arkansas, and his wife comes to accept the wealth generated by his new life. The small town gradually becomes wealthy and the hub of U.S. cocaine trafficking.

Later, Schafer asks Seal to run guns to the Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras. Seal realizes that the Contras are not serious about the war and just want to get rich and he starts trading the guns to the cartel. The CIA sets up a Contra training base in Mena and Seal flies the Contras in, but many of them escape as soon as they arrive.

Seal makes so much money he buries it in suitcases in the backyard. Seal's freeloading brother-in-law JB moves in, needing a job. Eventually, he starts stealing money from the Seals and is arrested after the local sheriff catches him with a briefcase full of laundered cash. With JB out on bail, Seal gives him money and a plane ticket to Bora Bora and tells him to get lost for his own safety. JB demands weekly cash and insults Lucy. As Barry chases after him, JB is killed in his car by a bomb placed by the Medellín Cartel, who had previously promised to "take care" of the JB problem.

Eventually, the CIA shuts the program down and abandons Seal, who is arrested by the FBI, DEA, ATF and Arkansas State Police simultaneously. Seal escapes prosecution by making a deal with the White House, which wants evidence of the Sandinistas being drug traffickers. They ask Seal to get photos that tie the Medellín Cartel to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Seal manages to get the pictures, but the White House releases them as propaganda against the Sandinistas. Seal is prominently shown in the pictures, which leads to his arrest, and to the cartel plotting revenge.

Seal is convicted but sentenced to only 1,000 hours of community service. Moving from motel to motel making video recordings of his experiences, Seal fears an explosion anytime he starts his car. As his community service is performed at the same Salvation Army building every night, Seal cannot hide from the cartel and is shot dead by assassins. The CIA destroys all evidence connecting them to Seal. After Seal is dead, the CIA continues smuggling, instead using Iran to get guns to the Contras.

• Tom Cruise as Barry Seal
• Domhnall Gleeson as Monty Schafer
• Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal
• Jesse Plemons as Sheriff Joe Downing, of Mena, Arkansas
• Caleb Landry Jones as JB, Lucy's brother
• Jayma Mays as Dana Sibota, state attorney general
• Lola Kirke as Judy Downing
• Connor Trinneer as George W. Bush
• Felipe Bernedette as Officer Translator

In May 2015, Universal set the film for release on January 6, 2017.[20] On August 8, 2016, the film's release was pushed to September 29, 2017, and its title changed from Mena to American Made.[21] It was released in Europe on August 23, 2017, and in the United States on September 29, 2017, and also screened at the Deauville Film Festival on September 1, 2017.[22]

Despite the film's suggestion that he was recruited by the CIA while working for TWA, Seal denied in court that he had ever worked for the CIA. Monty Schafer was a fictional character and not based on a real-life CIA agent. A 1996 report by the CIA inspector general acknowledged that covert training exercises were conducted at the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport, but denied that any illegal drug smuggling took place.[30] In 1986, Los Angeles sheriff's deputies arrested a man who claimed to be a CIA employee during a raid targeting money-laundering associated with the illegal drug trade. "Officers discovered films of military operations in Central America, technical manuals, information on assorted military hardware and communications, and numerous documents indicating that drug money was being used to purchase military equipment for Central America."[31]

Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely claiming medical leave when he was involved in a smuggling scheme. Seal's connections with cartel bosses were also not direct when he was running his drug operations, and he did not meet Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers in person until 1984, when he was working as an informant for the DEA on an undercover operation, following his arrest.[32]

His third wife Deborah, whom Lucy was loosely based on, stated that Seal started his drug smuggling business in 1975, not 1980 like the film suggests, and that it was centered around marijuana before it involved cocaine. Seal's DEA record also noted that he expanded to smuggling cocaine in 1978 and claimed that he was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976. Seal's ties to the Medellín Cartel also began not after being kidnapped while refueling his plane in Colombia, but when he met a smuggler who flew for cartel operative Jorge Ochoa during a flight home from Honduras, where he served nine months in a local jail after being caught smuggling drugs in 1979.[32]

When asked by Abraham Riesman of Vulture if the film was a biopic, director Doug Liman said "You know, we're not making a biopic. Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." It has been noted the real Seal was not of Tom Cruise's 5-foot-7 frame, and was an obese man who reportedly weighed 300 pounds.[33] Liman has also acknowledged that the film's zero-gravity love scene was his idea, and that he received the inspiration for it after he and Cruise collided in the cockpit while filming a flight scene.[32]

Seal was unapologetic about his weapons and drug smuggling operations, even stating once in a television interview, "Whether you call it soldier of fortune or what, it's a way of life for me. I enjoy it and I'm going to keep doing it."[33] He also never crash-landed into a suburban neighborhood.[32] Liman has described the film as "a fun lie based on a true story."[33]

• American Made on IMDb