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American Made

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American Made 's fast-and-loose attitude with its real-life story mirrors the cavalier -- and delightfully watchable -- energy Tom Cruise gives off in the leading role.

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Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Domhnall Gleeson

Monty "Schafer"

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The True Story Behind the Movie American Made

American Made , the new Tom Cruise crime drama out Sept. 29, has all the makings of a romp: drug running and arms smuggling. An FBI sting. Enough cold, hard cash to make the phenomenon of raining money a plausible ecological scenario. And a sex scene in the cockpit of a plane. That’s flying through the air. With one participant being the pilot. Did we mention it’s Tom Cruise?

If it sounds like an exercise in screenwriting excess, it’s not entirely — the film takes as its inspiration the true story of Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, a TWA pilot who became a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel and, later, an informant for the DEA. It’s an ideal vehicle for Cruise, a.k.a. Maverick , whose mischievous swagger is accented here (literally) with a Louisiana drawl.

The movie hardly purports to be a documentary — director Doug Liman, who reteams with Cruise after Edge of Tomorrow , has referred to it as “a fun lie based on a true story.” And perhaps its looseness with the facts is for the best, as conflicting accounts make it difficult to get a clear picture on certain aspects of Seal’s seemingly made-for-the-movies life. It’s a thorny story that takes place against the backdrop of the Reagan-era War on Drugs and the notorious Iran-Contra affair , with Seal never hesitating to do business with opposing sides, so long as the payout was prodigious.

Here’s what we know about Seal — and what’s still up for debate.

MORE: Review: American Made Lets a Smug Tom Cruise Just Be Tom Cruise

Fact: Seal was an unusually talented young pilot.

According to Smuggler’s End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal — written by retired FBI agent Del Hahn, who worked on the task force that went after Seal in the ’80s — Seal obtained his student pilot license at 15 and became fully licensed at 16. His instructor was so impressed by his natural talent that he allowed him to fly solo after only eight hours of training. After serving in the National Guard and Army Reserve, he became a pilot with TWA, among the youngest command pilots to operate a Boeing 707.

Fact: He had a colorful personality.

As Cruise plays him, Seal was a blend of balls and braggadocio, fond of stunts and rarely registering the possibilities of danger or failure. According to Hahn, Seal’s high school yearbook photo was accompanied by the inscription, “Full of fun, full of folly.” His flight instructor described him as wild and fearless and generally unconcerned with the consequences of his actions. In an interview with Vice , Hahn says Seal was personable but “not as smart and clever as he thought he was.”

Partly Fiction: He was married to a woman named Lucy and they had three kids.

Sarah Wright plays Seal’s delightfully foul-mouthed wife in the movie, alternately exasperated by his schemes and enthralled by the riches they bring. In reality, Seal was married three times and had five children. He had a son and daughter with first wife Barbara Bottoms, whom he married in 1963 and subsequently divorced. He then married Linda McGarrh Ross in 1971, divorcing a year later, before marrying Deborah Ann DuBois, with whom he would go on to have three children, in 1974.

Fiction: The government first took notice of his smuggling when he was transporting Cuban cigars.

While the film depicts Seal’s foray into smuggling as beginning with Cuban cigars, his first documented run-in with the law for a smuggling offense took place in 1972 when he was one of eight people arrested for a plot to smuggle explosives out of the U.S. Though he wasn’t convicted, he lost his job with TWA. By 1976, according to Hahn, he had moved onto marijuana, and within a couple of years graduated to cocaine, which was less bulky, less sniffable by dogs and generally more profitable.

Fact: He smuggled drugs in through the Louisiana coast.

Seal and the pilots he recruited — including one he met in jail and his first wife’s brother — trafficked drugs over the border of his home state. As in the movie, he sometimes delivered them by pushing packed duffel bags out of his plane and into the Atchafalaya basin, to be retrieved by partners on the ground.

Mostly Fiction: Seal was chummy with the leaders of Colombia’s Medellín Cartel, including Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers.

In the movie, Seal meets the cartel big wigs early on. In reality, Hahn writes, he did not deal with them directly, and they referred to him only as “El Gordo,” or “The Fat Man.” He finally met with them in April 1984 when he was working with the DEA on a sting operation intended to lead to their capture. (That operation would go awry when Seal’s status as an informant was revealed in a Washington Times cover story months later.)

Fact: Seal offered to cooperate with the DEA to stay out of prison.

The DEA was onto Seal for a long time before securing an indictment against him in March 1983 on several counts, including conspiracy to distribute methaqualone and possession with intent to distribute Quaaludes. As the movie suggests, there was some confusion among government agencies intent on taking him down.

His initial attempt to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, offering information on the Ochoa family, was rejected. But in March 1984, he traveled to Washington to the office of the Vice President’s Drug Task Force and cut a deal on the strength of his intel on and connections to the cartel.

Contested: He worked for many years alongside the CIA.

The film has Seal’s involvement with the CIA beginning in the late 1970s, relatively early on in his smuggling career. Under the handling of an agent played by Domhnall Gleeson, Cruise’s Seal gathers intelligence by flying low over Guatemala and Nicaragua and snapping photos from his plane. Later, the CIA turns a blind eye to his drug smuggling in exchange for his delivery of arms to the Contras in Nicaragua, who the U.S. government was attempting to mobilize against the leftist Sandinistas, who controlled the government. The movie even suggests that the CIA helped set Seal up with his very own airport in the small town of Mena, Ark.

According to Hahn’s book, rumors of Seal’s involvement with the CIA anytime before 1984 were just that — rumors. The only confirmed connection between Seal and the CIA turned up by Hahn’s research was in 1984, after Seal had begun working as an informant for the DEA. The CIA placed a hidden camera in a cargo plane Seal flew to pick up a cocaine shipment in Colombia. He and his copilot were able to obtain photographs that proved a link between the Sandinistas and the cartel, key intelligence for the Reagan administration in its plans to help overthrow the Sandinistas’ regime. But the final piece of the operation — a celebration of the successful cocaine transport, at which the Ochoas and Escobar were to be arrested all at once — never happened because of the revelation of Seal’s status as an informant.

Fact: Seal was assassinated in 1986.

Jorge Ochoa reportedly ordered a hit on Seal early in 1986. At the time, Seal was living in a Baton Rouge Salvation Army facility. Charges against him had not been fully erased as a result of his cooperation with the government, and he was sentenced to probation and six months residing at the treatment center. On the evening of Feb. 19, just after he parked his Cadillac, he was killed by two Colombian hitmen armed with machine guns.

Thanks in part to several witnesses, both men and four additional men who conspired in the killing were arrested within two days. Seal would go down as a legendary criminal, one of the most important witnesses in DEA history and — in Hollywood’s estimation, at least — a classic American story fit for only our most American onscreen hero.

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American Made vs. the True Story of Barry Seal

Had barry seal really been a commercial airline pilot for twa.

Yes. Like in the American Made movie, the real Barry Seal earned a living as a commercial airline pilot for several years. He was hired by Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1964 and at age 26 became one of the youngest Captains operating a Boeing 707. He had already been flying planes for nearly half his life, earning his student pilot's license at age 15 and pilot's license at 16. Embracing his entrepreneurial spirit as a teenager, he started a small business flying ads from his airplane. In 1961, he joined the Louisiana Army National Guard and served with the 20th Special Forces Group for six years. -Daily Mail Online Like in the movie, the real Barry Seal was a former TWA pilot.

Was Barry Seal recruited by the CIA while he worked for TWA?

No, in real life, it happened earlier. In the American Made movie, Barry Seal's boredom with piloting commercial flights leads him to perform stunts that cause the oxygen masks to fall and frighten passengers. This draws the attention of the CIA. Operative Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) approaches Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) and tells him, "We need you to deliver stuff for us." The real Barry Seal claimed that he started running covert operations for various government agencies as early as the late 1950s, while he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans, well before he became a TWA pilot. Seal said that he started by doing things like flying guns for the CIA to revolution fighters in Cuba in the late 1950s and flying operations for U.S. Army Special Forces in Laos just prior to the Vietnam War. -Daily Mail Online

Did Barry Seal resign as a TWA pilot to carry out covert operations for the CIA?

No. Barry Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely citing medical leave when he was actually off trafficking weapons. He had been arrested in 1972 by the U.S. Customs Service for trying to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to anti-Castro Cubans via Mexico. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal

Is Domhnall Gleeson's character, Monty Schafer, based on a real CIA agent?

No. Fact-checking American Made revealed that Monty Schafer is a fictional character created to represent Barry Seal's contacts at the CIA. There is no real-life Monty. Domhnall Gleeson as fictional CIA agent Monty Schafer in American Made .

Did Barry Seal meet Lee Harvey Oswald?

Yes. An interesting fact we learned while researching the true story was that while training for the Civil Air Patrol in Baton Rouge, Barry Seal met President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. - Refinery29

Is Barry Seal's wife in the movie based on a real person?

Yes. However, her real name is Debbie, not Lucy. She is a brunette, not a blond like Sarah Wright's character in the movie. Barry met Debbie while he was on his way to a hearing after he was caught in 1972 trying to smuggle military explosives out of the country. The explosives were supposedly going to anti-Castro Cuban fighters. Debbie, who was 21 at the time, met Barry, 33, while working as a cashier at a restaurant. "He stopped in there and, just like that, he asked me out," Debbie told Daily Mail Online . "He would tell me all these wild stories about the missions he had flown. I was young and it was impressive." They married in 1974. Debbie became Barry's third wife. He had previously been married to Barbara Bottoms (m. 1963-1971) and Lynn Ross (m. 1971-1972).

Was Barry Seal really working for both the CIA and Pablo Escobar in the early 1980s?

The extent of Barry Seal's involvement with the CIA in the 1980s has provided fuel for speculation and conspiracy theories. As author Del Hahn states in his book about Barry Seal's life, Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal , there is no evidence to support claims that Barry Seal worked for the CIA. Hahn was part of the task force that pursued Seal in the 1980s. In his book, he uses case documents and first-person accounts to dispel this idea and other half-truths about Seal. However, some still allege the opposite, that the government turned a blind eye to Seal's drug running in order to use him to deliver weapons to the Nicaraguan rebels. Basically, Seal would fly over the guns and smuggle back drugs on his return trip. It's certainly possible and it's what the movie proposes. Yet, it's also certainly possible that Seal had no involvement with the CIA in the early 1980s at all, given there is nothing to support the claim but rumors. In the least, his exploits with the CIA and agent Monty Schafer in the movie are largely fictional and based on speculation. In his research for the book, the only confirmed connection Hahn could make between the CIA and Barry Seal was in 1984, after Seal had started working as an informant for the DEA. What is certain is that Barry Seal did work for Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas as a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel and single-handedly had one of the largest impacts on the cocaine epidemic in the U.S. in the early 1980s. Seal made an estimated $60 million off smuggling drugs into the country and became one of the richest people in America. Executing secret missions for the government in the movie might add a sort of patriotism and redeeming quality to his character, but in real life Barry Seal was a drug smuggler first and foremost. That aspect of who he was has never been disputed. Del Hahn's book "Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal" attempts to dispel the rumors and half-truths associated with Barry Seal, including his work for the CIA.

What was the Iran-Contra affair?

As stated in the previous question, there is no strong evidence to confirm that Barry Seal was working with the CIA prior to becoming an informant after his arrest in 1983. Yet, some believe that Seal was working for the CIA in the 1980s to fly guns and money to Nicaraguan rebels, a detail that the movie embraces. During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, the U.S. plotted to secretly help the rebels (Contras) overthrow Nicaragua's Communist Sandinista government. Money from the sale of weapons to Iran was used to help fund the rebels in Nicaragua. However, the U.S. needed a way to covertly get the funds and weapons to the rebels. Using pilots like Barry Seal was a means to an end. -Daily Mail Online

When did Barry Seal begin smuggling drugs?

The movie proposes that Barry Seal's first foray into smuggling drugs happened in 1980 after he was kidnapped while refueling his plane in Colombia. In the film, his abductors take him to a secret airstrip in the Colombian jungle where three businessmen, including Pablo Escobar, make him an offer he can't pass up. Upset that he has lost his pension and healthcare at TWA, he embraces the idea of making $2,000 per kilo of cocaine smuggled into the United States. This doesn't add up with the American Made true story. According to The Independent , Barry's widow, Deborah Seal, says that he began smuggling drugs in 1975, first focusing mainly on marijuana. Seal's Drug Enforcement Administration file also supports this, noting that he was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976, then adding cocaine to his resume in 1978.

How did Barry Seal become a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel?

In the movie, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) starts working for the Medellín Cartel after they abduct him while he is refueling his plane and then make him an offer he can't refuse. In real life, his first encounter with the Medellín Cartel happened less dramatically. After being caught in Honduras with 40 kilograms of cocaine in 1979, Barry spent nine months in a Honduran jail. While there, he had a chance meeting with Jorge Ochoa's New Orleans business manager. The Ochoa Family, along with Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders of the Medellín Cartel. Still unknown at the time, the cartel would go on to make hundreds of millions from the explosion of cocaine use in the U.S. Barry Seal, who became known as "El Gordo" (The Fat Man), ended up being an integral part of that success. -Daily Mail Online This undercover photo taken from a secret camera mounted in Barry Seal's plane shows Pablo Escobar (left) and Barry Seal (right) on a tarmac in Nicaragua, where drugs were loaded onto Seal's plane.

Did Barry Seal deal directly with Pablo Escobar and the other leaders of Colombia's Medellín Cartel?

No. According to Del Hahn's book Smuggler's End , Barry Seal was not chummy with the cartel bosses. He didn't meet Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers in person until 1984, after his arrest when he was working as an informant for the DEA on an undercover operation.

Did Barry Seal have three children?

No. According to TIME , in real life, he had five children and was married three times. The real Barry Seal and his wife Debbie had three children (Aaron, Dean and Christina). Barry also had a daughter and a son not shown in the movie, Lisa and Alder, with his first wife Barbara Bottoms.

Did Barry Seal really crash land a plane full of cocaine in a suburban neighborhood?

No. In the American Made movie , Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) crash lands a plane in a suburban neighborhood in an effort to escape the DEA who ordered him to land. Barry emerges from the plane covered in cocaine. He hands wads of cash to a kid on a bike, telling the boy, "You never saw me." The memorable scene never happened in real life. No evidence has been found to support that Barry Seal ever crash landed a plane in a suburban neighborhood, a story that surely would have made the news.

Did Barry really move his operation from Louisiana to Arkansas?

Yes. Barry Seal's smuggling operation began in Louisiana, and like in the American Made movie, he sometimes pushed packed duffel bags full of drugs out of his plane and into the Atchafalaya basin, to be collected by associates on the ground. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana native, Barry Seal was eventually forced to move his drug smuggling operation after he drew the attention of Louisiana authorities. He relocated to a small regional airport in Mena, Arkansas, which had a population of only 5,000. He carried out his smuggling operation under the nose of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. -TIME

How much money did Barry make smuggling drugs into the U.S.?

As a drug smuggler for Colombia's Medellín Cartel, Barry Seal earned as much as $500,000 per flight smuggling cocaine into the United States. By 1983, his earnings totaled $60 million, making him one of the wealthiest people in America. In total, he had illegally imported $3 to $5 billion worth of drugs and an estimated 56 tons of cocaine into the U.S., making over 100 flights. -Daily Mail Online By 1983, Barry Seal had made $60 million flying illegal drugs into the U.S.

Why was the movie's title changed from Mena to American Made ?

"Mena" refers to the small town in Arkansas where Barry Seal moved his operation, smuggling in drugs to a clandestine airfield under the nose of then-Governor Bill Clinton. Per The Hollywood Reporter , the movie's title was changed to put less emphasis on the Arkansas connection, including the possibility that Bill Clinton was aware of what was going on.

Did Barry Seal's wife know that he was a drug smuggler?

Debbie Seal insists that she was unaware of what her husband was up to. She says that she thought he was an airplane broker and also that he rented out old anti-aircraft lighting for various promotional events. Her character in the American Made movie is much more aware and suspicious of her husband's activities, stating that she flat out doesn't trust him, which is the opposite of Seal's real-life wife. "I trusted him so I didn't ask questions," says Debbie. "He would tell me, 'I'm going to such and such places,' and I wouldn't see him for days. I never saw drugs, that's for sure." -Daily Mail Online

Did the zero-gravity love scene really happen?

No. The scene was actually inspired by something that happened while director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise were training for the movie. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," Liman told Vulture . "He put the airplane into a parabolic arc and pinned me against the ceiling, and right in that moment, I had this inspiration. ... Wouldn't it be fun if they were fooling around in a plane and the plane went into the same kind of parabolic arc and they got pinned against the ceiling?" The movie's zero-g love scene never happened.

Did the cartel really kill Barry Seal's brother-in-law with a car bomb?

No. In the movie, Lucy's brother JB (Caleb Landry Jones) steals money from Barry (Tom Cruise). He carries it around and begins spending it, which attracts the attention of the local authorities. The cartel tells Barry that they'll deal with JB, a suggestion that Barry opposes. Soon after, JB is killed by a car bomb. JB is fictional. The real Barry Seal never had a brother-in-law who was killed by a car bomb.

Is American Made a biopic?

No. "You know, we're not making a biopic," said director Doug Liman. "Tom Cruise doesn't look like Barry Seal. His character is inspired by the stories we learned about Barry." The movie's loose interpretation of the truth is echoed in the trailer when a voice-over by Tom Cruise as Barry Seal tells us that only "some of this sh*t really happened." Liman has referred to the film as "a fun lie based on a true story" ( TIME ). American Made starring Tom Cruise was inspired by various tales about Barry Seal, but the film is not a biopic.

Was Barry Seal as likable as Tom Cruise's American Made character?

Yes, at least according to his wife and others who knew him. "The DEA agents who worked with Barry loved him," said director Doug Liman. "We're talking about one of the largest drug smugglers in America, and these agents loved him." While the filmmakers were shooting the movie in South America, a local pilot who was working with them said that he had met Barry. When asked how, he replied, "Oh, Barry stole an airplane from me. He took it out for a test flight and never came back." It turns out Barry flew the plane all the way back to the United States. The man said that despite the incident, he was still very fond of Barry. -Vulture.com Barry Seal was a ballsy and confident risk taker, who rarely acknowledged the possibility of failure, and that's just how Tom Cruise portrays him in the American Made movie. According to author Del Hahn, who wrote the book Smuggler's End , next to Barry's yearbook photo was the description, "Full of fun, full of folly" ( TIME ). Hahn told Vice that Barry was likable but "not as smart and clever as he thought he was."

Does Tom Cruise look like Barry Seal?

No. Fact-checking American Made immediately revealed that Tom Cruise looks nothing like the real Barry Seal, who weighed around 280lbs and was nicknamed "El Gordo" (The Fat Man) by his bosses. -Daily Mail Online The real Barry Seal (left and inset) and actor Tom Cruise (right) look nothing alike.

How was Barry Seal caught?

In researching the American Made true story, we learned that Barry Seal was arrested by customs officers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1983 as he tried to smuggle 200,000 units of Quaalude, a recreational drug, into the country. The DEA had been onto him for a long time. If he had in fact been working for the CIA at the time, his connections didn't get him off the hook.

Did Barry Seal offer to become a federal informant to avoid prison time?

Yes. In an effort to reduce or altogether avoid his 10-year prison sentence, Seal first tried to make a deal with a U.S. attorney, volunteering to give up information on the Ochoa family, but the deal was rejected. He then was able to get a meeting with Vice President George H.W. Bush's anti-drug task force in hopes of convincing them of his value as an informant. They referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA eventually took him up on his offer because of his knowledge and connections to the cartel. Seal became a federal informant in March 1984. His cooperation led to many convictions, as well as indictments against Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, two of the founding members of the Medellín Cartel. Ochoa was arrested in Spain on a U.S. warrant, but due to pressure from the cartel was never extradited to the U.S. -Court Documents (STATE of Louisiana v. Miguel VELEZ, Bernardo Vasquez, and Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz)

As an informant, did Barry Seal really bring back photos and drugs as part of his undercover work?

Yes. Like in the American Made movie, Barry Seal was allowed to fly out of the country and return with illegal drugs that the feds made sure never reached their targets. Concurrently, they had to make sure not to raise the suspicions of the ruthless Colombian drug lords. Undercover cameras installed on Seal's plane captured photos on the tarmac of a Nicaraguan airport. Images like the one earlier on this page show Medellín Cartel boss Pablo Escobar with Sandinista government officials and soldiers, who were loading cocaine onto Seal's plane, nicknamed the Fat Lady. Other photos like the one below show Federico Vaughan (center, striped shirt), a man that Seal claimed was a top aide of Tomas Borge, the Sandinista Minister of the Interior. The White House saw the pictures as proof of the communist Sandinista government's corruption and believed that the photos would help to convince the public of the need to support and arm the rebels (Contras) in Nicaragua. Later, after Seal's cover was suspiciously blown, President Reagan used the photo shown below in a 1986 television address to the nation . -The Independent President Ronald Reagan referenced this photo in a 1986 address to the nation. At center in the striped shirt helping to load drugs onto Seal's plane is Federico Vaughan, believed to be an aide to the Interior Minister of Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Did Col. Oliver North inadvertently get Barry Seal killed?

Not likely. No other name is perhaps more associated with the Iran-Contra affair than Oliver North, but his involvement in exposing Barry Seal's mission and blowing his cover is unknown and entirely speculation. A July 17, 1984 front-page Washington Times article by Edmund Jacoby described a link between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Medellín drug cartel. Jacoby mentioned Seal's mission as evidence, which effectively outed Seal as a government agent. When asked who his source was, Jacoby implied that it was "an aide in the White House" and that Oliver North had the most motivation to release the information. Despite the movie attempting to pin it on North, Jacoby later said that North was not his source and that it was a deceased Special Forces and CIA guy named Ted Lunger, who at the time worked as a staff member for Representative Dan Daniel. "I can state absolutely that Oliver North had nothing to do with my story as far as I knew, or as far as I know today," said Jacoby. Regardless, Jacoby's article led to the abandonment of the final piece of Barry Seal's undercover operation. Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas were going to be arrested at a celebration of Seal's successful cocaine transport. The arrests never happened since Seal's cover was blown. -Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal

Did the cartel put a contract out on Barry Seal?

Yes. "One day Barry came in and said there was a contract on him - half a million dead, a million alive," says widow Debbie Seal. "He thought we had more time. I guess he also thought Colombians would stick out like a sore thumb in Louisiana and they wouldn't come here." It is believed that the Colombians put a hit out on Barry after they learned he was going to help the feds with the extradition of Jorge Ochoa from Spain, one of the heads of the Medellín Cartel. Barry and his wife talked about going into witness protection, but like in the movie, he decided against it. -Daily Mail Online

Why wasn't Barry Seal forced into witness protection?

Author Del Hahn, a former FBI agent who wrote the book about Seal titled Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal , told Vice , "Seal thought he was smarter and cleverer than the Ochoas," who are one of the founding families of the Medellín Cartel. He wasn't. Barry Seal's widow, Debbie Seal, and others have wondered why the government didn't do more to protect Seal, whether he wanted the protection or not. Conspiracy theorists have gone as far as suggesting that the government ordered the hit on Seal, not the cartel, a suggestion that has never been supported by any proof.

Was Barry Seal assassinated in a parking lot?

Yes. The assassination happened on February 19, 1986 in the parking lot in front of the Salvation Army building on Airline Highway (U.S. 61) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As part of his reduced sentence, the judge had ordered Barry to spend his nights, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., at a Salvation Army halfway house for six months. Barry arrived that evening at approximately 6 p.m. and backed his white Cadillac into a parking space. He was unaware that a Colombian assassin was hiding behind one of the donation drop boxes. As Barry opened the driver's side door to get out of the car, the gunman rushed from behind the drop box and fired a .45 caliber Mac-10 machine gun, hitting Barry in the head and body several times. The gunman hurried into a waiting Buick, which sped away. The gunman was later identified as Luis Carlos Quintero-Cruz. Miguel Velez was the man driving the getaway car. Three Colombians supposedly sent by the Ochoas, including Cruz and Velez, were later arrested at the airport. They were all sentenced to life in prison. -Court Documents The 2016 Bryan Cranston movie The Infiltrator also depicts Barry Seal's assassination, but it is historically inaccurate. That film finds Seal (portrayed by Michael Paré) being assassinated in a motorcycle drive-by shooting while he is driving and Robert Mazur (Cranston) is his passenger.

Does director Doug Liman have ties to the true story?

Yes. While exploring the real-life story behind the movie, we discovered that Doug Liman's father, lawyer Arthur L. Liman, ran the Senate investigation into Iran-Contra. Arthur, the chief council, investigated the CIA and questioned Col. Oliver North, who is depicted in American Made . Doug Liman had previously modeled Chris Cooper's villain in The Bourne Identity after North, which reveals Liman's feelings about the controversial figure North. -Vulture.com

Did Tom Cruise do all of his own flying in the movie?

Yes. "Tom did all his own flying in the movie," says director Doug Liman, who is a pilot himself ( Vulture.com ). Tom Cruise got his pilot's license in 1994. "I fly airplanes. I'm a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot," Cruise said in a Wired interview. "Doug and I are both aviators, so we both love to fly."

How does Barry Seal's family feel about the movie?

Not all of Barry Seal's heirs were happy with the making of the movie. Lisa Seal Frigon, Barry's daughter from his first marriage, sued Universal, claiming that the studio should have purchased Barry's life rights from her, not his third wife Deborah who they paid $350,000. In her suit, Lisa, who is not depicted in the movie, also claimed that there were factual inaccuracies in the script, including the fact that Barry had five children, not three, and that the movie falsely suggests he was an alcoholic and a reckless pilot.

Were two pilots killed during the making of American Made ?

Yes. Just prior to the movie's release, news broke that the family of deceased stunt pilot Alan Purwin was suing American Made 's producers for wrongful death. Purwin was a passenger in a plane that went down, killing both Purwin and Venezuelan pilot Carlos Berl. The accident didn't happen during filming. The lawsuit claims that the pilots were overworked and that the crash happened after a 12-hour workday. In court documents, the family alleged that "lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety" contributed to the fatal crash in the mountains of Colombia. They also claimed that the pilot who died lacked the necessary experience for the flight. -Good Morning America

Watch an interview with the real Barry Seal where he discusses his undercover mission, and listen to President Ronald Reagan talk about the photos Seal obtained on the mission. Also, view a news story about Barry Seal's death.

American Made

The makers of the based-on-a-true-story black comedy “American Made” fail to satisfactorily answer one pressing question: why is CIA operative and Colombia drug-runner Barry Seal’s story being told as a movie and not a book? What’s being shown in this film that couldn’t also be expressed in prose?

In telling the true story of American airplane pilot Barry Seal ( Tom Cruise ), writer Gary Spinelli and director Doug Liman (“Edge of Tomorrow ,” “ Jumper “) choose to overstimulate viewers rather than challenge them. They emphasize Barry’s charm, the exotic nature of his South American trade routes, and the rapid escalation of events that ultimately led to his downfall. Cruise’s smile is, in this context, deployed like a weapon in Liman and Spinelli’s overwhelming charm offensive. You don’t get a lot of psychological insight into Barry’s character, or learn why he was so determined to make more money than he could spend, despite conflicting pressures from Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel and the American government to either quit or collude.

But you do get a lot of shots of Cruise grinning from behind aviator glasses in extreme close-ups, many of which are lensed with hand-held digital cameras that show you the wilds of Nicaragua and Colombia through an Instagram-cheap green/yellow filter. “American Made” may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers’ money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it’s mostly a sensational, sub-“Wolf of Wall Street”-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

The alarming pace of Barry’s narrative, designed to put Cruise’s charisma front and center, keeps viewers disoriented. It’s often hard to understand Barry’s motives beyond caricature-broad assumptions about his (lack of) character. In 1977, Barry agrees to fly over South American countries and take photos of suspected communist groups using a spy plane provided by shadowy CIA pencil-pusher Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). Barry is impulsive, or so we’re meant to think based on an incident where he wakes up a sleeping co-pilot by abruptly sending a commercial airliner into a nosedive. This scene may explain why Barry grins like a lunatic as he explains to his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) that he’ll figure out a way to pay out of pocket for his family’s health insurance once he opens an independent shipping company called “IAC” (Get it? IAC – CIA?).

Barry’s impetuousness does not, however, explain why he flies so low to land when he takes his photographs. Or why he doesn’t immediately reach out to Schafer when he’s kidnapped and forced by Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and his Cartel associates to deliver hundreds of pounds of cocaine to the United States. Or why Barry thinks so little of his wife and kids that he packs their Louisiana house up one night without explanation, and moves them to a safe-house in Arkansas. There’s character-defining insanity, and then there’s “this barely makes sense in the moment when it is happening” crazy. Barry often appears to be the latter kind of nutbar.

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.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in The New York Times , Vanity Fair , The Village Voice, and elsewhere.

Lola Kirke as Judy Downing
Jesse Plemons as Sheriff Downing
Tom Cruise as Barry Seal
Jayma Mays as Dana Sibota
Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal
Caleb Landry Jones as JB
Domhnall Gleeson as Monty 'Schafer'
Andrew Mondshein

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César Charlone
Christophe Beck
Gary Spinelli

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Barry Seal: The real-life story behind Tom Cruise's character in American Made

Doug liman’s new film follows the wild true story of a pilot, drug smuggler, and eventual informant, article bookmarked.

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Hollywood screenwriters toil their lives away trying to come up with the next crazy, catchy story to pitch. Yet, sometimes, history does the work for them.

Tom Cruise ‘s latest vehicle American Made , directed by Doug Liman, sees the A-lister play the infamous Barry Seal: a pilot who became a drug smuggler, who in turn became an informant, finding himself at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal of Ronald Reagan’s era.

Seal’s love of flying blossomed early; he took his first solo flight at the age of 15, before gaining a pilot’s licence at 16, earning money by towing advertising banners. After serving in the Louisiana Army National Guard and Army Reserve, he joined Trans World Airlines in 1968 as a flight engineer, before becoming one of the youngest command pilots in the entire fleet.

According to his wife Deborah Seal, he became involved in drug smuggling in 1975. During the early 1980s, he developed a close relationship with the Medellin Cartel, whose leadership included Pablo Escobar. It was then that he moved his operations from his home state of Louisiana to an airstrip in rural west Arkansas.

In 1983, however, Seal was caught in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as he tried to smuggle a shipment of Quaaludes into the country. By his own admission, he had by then flown more than 100 flights of 600 to 1200 pounds of cocaine each, equating to between $3bn and $5bn worth of drugs into the US.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Former FBI agent Del Hahn, however, describes how Seal was desperate to avoid jail time ; after his offer to turn snitch was turned down multiple times, he eventually flew straight to DC and the office of the vice president’s drug task force. They sent him to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Seal was soon enlisted into a sting operation. The aim? The Reagan administration was keen to see the Contras militia overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government which had installed itself in Nicaragua; Seal claimed the Sandinistas had made a deal with the Medellin Cartel, and proof of such could lend justification to the US’s support of the Contras, despite accusations of human rights violations amongst the counter-revolutionaries.

And so, the pilot flew into an airstrip in Nicaragua with CIA cameras installed on his plane, snapping pictures which showed Escobar and several other members of the Medellin Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a plane with the aid of Sandinista soldiers.

Seal claimed that one of the men present, Federico Vaughan, was an associate of Tomas Borge of the interior ministry of Nicaragua. However, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny threw doubt over Seal’s accusations, claiming there was no evidence tying any Nicaraguan officials to the drug shipment.

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Others, however, jumped on Seal’s testimony. And that would be his undoing. A front page story in The Washington Times by Edmond Jacoby about links between Sandinista officials and the Medellin Cartel discussed Seal’s mission and appeared to out him as a government agent.

Cruise control: the film star is in his comfort zone in ‘American Made’

The DEA cut him loose, but that also left him vulnerable. He was later arrested by the FBI in Louisiana, though only received six months supervised probation; a condition of his sentence was that he spend every night, from 6pm to 6am, at the Salvation Army halfway house in Baton Rouge.

It was outside of this building that he was shot and killed on 19 February, 1986. A friend said of the incident, “I saw Barry get killed from the window of the Belmont hotel coffee shop. The killers were both out of the car, one on either side, but I only saw one shoot, cause Barry saw it coming and just put his head down on the steering column.”

Colombian assassins sent by the Medellin Cartel were apprehended trying to leave Louisiana soon after Seal’s murder. Three of the men were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, some believe the CIA was behind the killing.

After his death, Louisiana attorney general William Guste hand-delivered a letter to US Attorney General Edwin Meese in protest at the government’s failure to protect Seal. Though he called him a “heinous criminal”, Guste added: “At the same time, for his own purposes, he had made himself an extremely valuable witness and informant in the country’s fight against illegal drugs.”

“Barry Seal’s murder suggests the need for an in-depth but rapid investigation into a number of areas. Why was such an important witness not given protection whether he wanted it or not?” There’s still no real answer to this question today.

‘American Made’ hits UK cinemas 25 August

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Why Bill Clinton And George W. Bush Are Portrayed In A Tom Cruise Movie About An Infamous Drug Smuggler

"I just wanted to just sort of say, 'We're not ignorant of those allegations,’” said American Made director Doug Liman. Warning: This story contains SPOILERS.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Tom Cruise in American Made .

American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life former airline pilot who embarked on a wildly successful cocaine smuggling operation between Colombia and a tiny airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980s. Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medellín cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega — and he was abetted, the film argues, by the CIA and DEA.

The most eyebrow-raising moments in American Made , however, come when Seal crosses paths with two other major historical figures: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

American Made screenwriter Gary Spinelli ( Stash House ) was interested in the Mena, Arkansas, story as possible fodder for a screenplay, and in his research, he kept coming across Seal. Along with Seal's wildly successful drug smuggling operation, and his subsequent cooperation with the DEA as an informant against the Medellín cartel, Spinelli discovered allegations that Seal was also flying missions for the CIA's campaign to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua — all of which transformed into the Iran-Contra scandal, and dominated President Ronald Reagan's second term.

As is to be expected from purported involvement in clandestine operations, Seal's work with the CIA remains in dispute . But in their interviews with BuzzFeed News, Spinelli and director Doug Liman ( Edge of Tomorrow, The Bourne Identity ) said that they were totally comfortable connecting Seal with the CIA based on the basic deduction that Seal could not have pulled off the massive scale of his drug smuggling operation without outside help. "He was flying in and out of the country, unbeknownst to all law enforcement, and it's pretty improbable that he would be able to do that on his own," said Spinelli.

Director Doug Liman and Cruise on the set of American Made .

Seal was murdered in 1986 , by Colombian nationals allegedly carrying out a contract on his life — a fact that, coupled with the fuzzy details surrounding his possible collusion with federal intelligence officials, makes him terrific fodder for a different kind of storytelling, and is ultimately what led the filmmakers to include Clinton and Bush in American Made .

"Barry Seal is like a conspiracy theorist magnet for the left and the right," said Liman.

For example, Spinelli said, "one of the big conspiracy theories around Barry is that he was [George] H.W. Bush's personal pilot, and when Barry was killed, he had Bush's phone number in his back pocket."

Neither filmmaker felt it was appropriate to include that unsubstantiated theory, but they also knew that astute audience members might already be familiar with it. Which is how American Made , which opens Sept. 29, ended up with a scene in which Seal is waiting for a meeting at the White House while sitting next to a young George W. Bush (Connor Trinneer) as they exchange small talk about piloting planes.

"I just wanted to put a little fun thing between Barry and George W. Bush to just sort of say, 'We're not ignorant of those allegations,'" said Liman. "'We're not going to put them in the movie, but we're not making this movie in a vacuum, either.'"

Spinelli said that since Seal reportedly did visit the Reagan White House, he was OK with placing him next to Bush, who also regularly visited the White House when his father was vice president. "You know, there's dramatic license there, but both [Seal and Bush] were pilots, and I just thought it would be a cool moment to have [H.W. Bush's] son meet Barry in the hallway," he said. (Representatives for George W. Bush did not respond to a request to comment.)

Left: An early photo of Bill Clinton, governor-elect of Arkansas. Right: George W. Bush in an undated photo in Arlington, Texas, speaking during a Texas Rangers game.

Seal's connection to Clinton, meanwhile, is even more fraught with conspiracies: Some claim that, as governor of Arkansas, Clinton actively participated with the CIA in smuggling cocaine into the US. Googling Clinton's and Seal's names together produces reams of stories with screaming headlines like "Mena Coverup - Bill & Hillary Clinton's Arkansas Cocaine Operation" and "EXPOSED: Clinton's Trafficked MASSIVE CIA Shipments of Cocaine" and "SNOW JOB: THE CIA, COCAINE, AND BILL CLINTON."

Before American Made went into production, Liman actually cut allegations in Spinelli's original script that the CIA was directly trafficking in cocaine with Seal — in part because, as fate would have it, the chief counsel for the Senate's investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal was Liman's late father, Arthur L. Liman. "My father's deputy said he had looked into those specific allegations and found them so without merit that he didn't even put it in the report to deny it because that gives it some weight," Liman said.

But both Spinelli and Liman understood that, as with the Bush family, they couldn't tell Seal's story and not at least tip their hats to the cottage industry of fringe Clinton conspiracies involving him. So they included a scene in which, after Seal has been arrested by multiple agencies, the attorney general of Arkansas fields a call from then-governor Clinton. Afterwards, Seal is released from custody and immediately whisked away to the White House — the implication being that Clinton had been asked by the Reagan administration to cut Seal loose so he could begin informing for the DEA.

Clinton never appears in the scene — we only know it's him on the phone after the state attorney general calls him "Bill" — but the filmmakers claim that this event, or at least something like it, did happen.

"We knew that somehow Barry was operating with immunity. The CIA was operating with immunity in Arkansas. So there had to have been some involvement of the governor's office," said Liman. "There is a prosecutor in Arkansas who was told to back off. And so we combined that with the fact that the CIA was for sure operating in Arkansas and Clinton was the governor, to condense it down into one specific moment."

Cruise in American Made .

In a 1994 press conference, President Clinton was asked specifically about how much he knew about the CIA's alleged operation in Mena, Arkansas. "They didn't tell me anything about it," Clinton said. "The airport in question and all the events in question were the subject of state and federal inquiries. It was primarily a matter for federal jurisdiction. The state really had next to nothing to do with it. … We had nothing — zero — to do with it. And everybody who's ever looked into it knows that." (A representative for Clinton did not respond to a request seeking further comment.)

While both Spinelli and Liman stand by American Made ’s assertions, they ultimately set out to make an entertaining movie — and by having Seal narrate his own story, they can couch their narrative in his subjective point of view. "He really is telling you his version of it," said Spinelli. "What the facts are of the record don't matter as much as what Barry thought had happened."

"Nowhere does the film deal with the consequences of Barry's actions," added Liman. "Barry doesn't tell you the part of the story where, say, American inner cities are being decimated by the influx of drugs. That's not part of Barry's narrative. … We're not making a biopic. We're more interested in the mechanics of how an operation like this works, and the kinds of people that get involved. Because it's really fun." Particularly when it potentially involves former presidents.

Thumbnail photo credits: Bettmann / Bettmann Archive; David James / Universal Pictures; Rich Pilling / Getty Images

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What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in American Made

Like The Wolf of Wall Street , American Made is based on the real-life exploits of a “lovable” rogue, Barry Seal. Also like TWWS , it gets us rooting for our hero despite his engaging in morally questionable, not to mention illegal, activities like gun-running and drug smuggling. To win us over, it uses many of the same techniques employed by TWWS : having our dubious hero played by an extremely charismatic star, in this case Tom Cruise, fully at home in the cockpit as another cocksure pilot; giving him a gorgeous blonde wife and adorable children for whom he’s doing it all; and, that standby of engaging villains from Richard III to House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, breaking the fourth wall with confessions directly into the camera, thus making us co-conspirators.

Plus, director Doug Liman and screenwriter Gary Spinelli streamline the story to suggest Seal had rather less agency in becoming a career criminal than the actual facts would indicate.

Recruitment

In the movie, Seal is an ace pilot whose daredevil streak leads him from TWA to the CIA. He’s bored rigid flying commercial flights, so he takes to performing stunts that trigger the oxygen masks and terrify passengers. His aviation skills and reputation for sailing close to the wind lead to an approach from Schafer, a CIA agent (or possibly a composite of several) played by Domhnall Gleeson (whose father, actor Brendan Gleeson, resembles the stocky real Seal much more than sleek Tom Cruise does). Schafer recruits Seal to take reconnaissance photos of guerillas operating in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, wooing him with a super-fast, super-nimble twin engine plane.

The real-life Seal seems to have joined up with the CIA much earlier. The late investigative journalist Alexander Cockburn contended that Seal first came into contact with the CIA in the ’60s as a special forces helicopter pilot in Vietnam and maintained links with them throughout his TWA years. Other accounts suggest his links might have gone back as far as the Bay of Pigs. Moreover, although the film suggests Seal was just an excitement-loving pilot who got swept up into espionage at the time, eight years earlier he had been attempting to fly 1,350 pounds of plastic explosives to some anti-Castro Cubans based in Mexico when he was arrested by the U.S. Customs Service . And far from resigning from TWA in 1978 to pursue this new, more exciting career in spying, he was fired in 1974 for falsely claiming medical leave when actually he was absent due to weapons trafficking. He escaped prosecution only because the CIA intervened, stating a trial would threaten national security.

Guerrilla reconnaissance

As a good ol’ boy from Louisiana, Seal readily accepts that the rationale for taking photographs is “fightin’ communists,” and the filmmakers don’t provide much context for this assessment.

In real life, of course, one person’s communist insurgent is another person’s freedom fighter. While certainly left-wing and receiving aid and training from Cuba, the guerrilla movements in these Central American countries were primarily a reaction to brutal dictatorships and, as a 1983 presidential commission reported , “decades of poverty, bloody repression, and frustrated efforts at bringing about political reform.” Oliver Stone’s kind-of based-on-true-events Salvador (1986) gives a view of the conflict from the other side.

Enter the Medellín

2017 Universal Studios, Eric VANDEVILLE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

In American Made , Seal is just minding his own business refueling his plane in Colombia in 1980 when he is bundled into a car and taken to a hidden airstrip in the Colombian jungle. There he is made an offer he can’t refuse by three “businessmen” (one named Pablo Escobar) in need of a pilot with the skills to navigate the dangerously short runway. Already feeling undercompensated by the CIA for the loss of his TWA pension and health care, Seal is swayed by the promise of $2,000 per kilo of cocaine brought to the U.S.

In real life, according to statements in his Drug Enforcement Administration file, Seal was smuggling marijuana as early as 1976 and began smuggling cocaine in 1978, well before any contact with the cartel.

Arrested in Colombia

The film has Seal becoming buddies with cartel kingpins Escobar and Ochoa after forming a lucrative partnership and partying with them at their penthouse in Cartagena, at least until the party is broken up by the Colombian Army. The kingpins, plus Seal, are thrown in jail, but while the Colombians walk free the next day, Seal remains incarcerated until Schafer gets him out. The agent later warns Seal that the smuggler has to get himself and his family out of Baton Rouge before sunrise in order to avoid a police raid and arranges for them to relocate to remote Mena, Arkansas, where the agency provides Seal with not only a house but also an airfield.

In reality, Seal was arrested with 40 kilograms of cocaine and spent nine months in a Honduran jail. There he met Ochoa’s New Orleans business manager, who brought Seal into the Medellín cartel’s orbit in 1982. He became its chief link to cocaine markets in the southeastern U.S., with his 1981 bank records showing daily deposits of $50,000 into a Bahamian bank. Also, he moved to Mena of his own accord in 1982.

Supporting the Contras

In the movie, in return for his get out of jail free card, Schafer wants Seal to fly AK-47s out of Mena to the Contras, the insurgent group tasked with overthrowing the Sandinistas, the leftwing movement that itself overthrew the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza DeBayle in 1979 and took his place. Then Schafer ups the ante by requiring Seal to return bearing Contras who will be trained in Mena. Meanwhile, Seal’s old pals Ochoa and Escobar suggest he drop off some of his guns in Colombia and resume bringing in cocaine on the return trip.

It is certainly true that Seal’s planes (by now he had a fleet) flew from Mena to Colombia, making refueling stops in Panama and Honduras (where the Contras were training) before returning laden with approximately $13 million worth of drugs.

Cockburn, among several other journalists and historians, also alleged that a quid pro quo existed, with the CIA turning a blind eye to Seal’s drug smuggling in return for his using it as cover to get weapons to the Contras. Further, there are allegations that Seal bought several of his planes from CIA-owned companies such as Air America (itself the subject of Roger Spottiswoode’s 1990 movie of the same name ) and Southern Air Transport.

The main source for the allegations that the Contras were brought for training in Arkansas is a book by a former Seal pilot named Terry Reed. However, many of those named in the book have disputed his account, with one bringing suit for libel.

In the film’s telling, the CIA abandoned Seal—getting rid of any paper trail or hard evidence that could link them to the smuggler—right before the ATF and the DEA and the FBI and the state police raid the Mena airport. Seal is charged in Arkansas with weapons, drug, and money-laundering offenses, but gets off with a community service order and is whisked off to the White House.

In reality, the DEA busted Seal for smuggling 200,000 Quaaludes into Florida in 1983. Facing a 10-year stretch, he was desperate to make a deal, but the DEA wasn’t interested. Going over their heads, he met with two members of then–Vice President George H.W. Bush’s Task Force on Drugs, offering his services as an undercover informant. Lured by the promise of getting inside information on the Medellín cartel, in March 1984 the DEA listed Seal as an official informant and got his sentence reduced.

What happened next is murky. According to Robert Joura, the DEA agent working with Seal, on the next pickup either Escobar or Ochoa told Seal the cartel was moving its base from Colombia to Nicaragua and giving a cut of its profits to the Sandinistas in exchange for use of an airfield in Managua.

But given that the cartel was operating more or less with impunity everywhere else in Central America and this would only further antagonize the U.S., another theory suggests this was a scheme cooked up by Seal and Ochoa to keep Seal on the good side of the intelligence community. At any rate, Seal went to Florida to face long-delayed sentencing on his Quaalude bust, receiving 10 years reduced to six months’ probation thanks to letters of support from the CIA and DEA.

Enter Oliver North

At this point, American Made introduces the controversial figure of Lt. Col. Oliver North, Reagan’s point man on anti-Sandinista activities, who is keen to give Seal one more mission: to obtain proof the Nicaraguan government is in bed with the cartel. To this end, they modify his new former Army C-123 transport plane so that he can take photographs unobtrusively.

Seal flies to Managua and duly obtains pictures of Escobar and Sandinista soldiers taking delivery of kilos of cocaine. But in his haste to nail the commies so that Congress will fund arms shipments, North releases the pictures before the Colombians are in custody. His cover blown, Seal is of no further use to the DEA, who promptly seize his assets. Worse, he must spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for a vengeful cartel.

In real life, Seal’s cover was blown even before the photographs appeared when, thanks to NSC and CIA leaks, the Washington Times ran a front-page story on the Sandinistas’ drug trafficking on July 17, 1984. But Congress was not persuaded and passed the Boland amendment prohibiting direct military aid to the Contras.

This meant that North still needed Seal to run guns for his operation, until the pilot was busted again in December 1984 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for smuggling marijuana. Thanks to testifying in three major drug trials over the next year that helped obtain convictions, he got off with five years’ probation along with six months at a local halfway house. Aftermath and death

As in the movie, three men shot Seal to death as he sat outside a Salvation Army in Baton Rouge in his white Cadillac. He died on Feb. 19, 1986, and three Colombian men were convicted of his murder .

After Seal’s death, a 1986–1989 Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation popularly known as the Kerry Committee report found that the State Department had made payments to known drug traffickers from funds earmarked for Contra humanitarian assistance. (Arthur L. Liman, the director’s father, was the chief counsel for the Senate investigation, which is what got the filmmaker interested in Iran–Contra in the first place .) The Reagan administration admitted that funds from cocaine smuggling had helped fund the Contras but insisted it was a rogue operation carried out without the government’s knowledge.

Even if some of the specifics vary, the film is true to two essential elements of Seal’s story. One, he made a hell of a lot of money—estimates range from $50 million (Seal himself) to $5 billion (Arkansas State Police investigators). In any case, it all seems to have disappeared. Secondly, Seal was a man caught between a rock and a hard place. As his brother Wendell said , he had become entangled in so many relationships “it was hard to tell who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.”

American Made is Inspired by the Real Life of Barry Seal

‘American Made’ is a high-octane thriller that stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a TWA pilot who becomes embroiled in a world of espionage, drug smuggling, and covert missions. The 2017 film skillfully navigates the intricate political landscape of 1980s America, where government agencies use Seal’s unique skills for their purposes. As the story unfolds, viewers are drawn into a thrilling tale of an anti-hero who brings both excitement and a touch of swagger to the screen.

Directed by Doug Liman and featuring a stellar cast including Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons, and Jayma Mays, ‘American Made’ offers an action-packed experience set against a backdrop that lends authenticity to the narrative. The film’s portrayal of a character like Barry Seal and his adventures might lead viewers to question the veracity of the story. You might find yourself questioning whether the central character and events depicted in the film are based on a true story or simply a product of someone’s imagination.

American Made is Based on a Real Pilot

‘American Made’ is inspired by the story of Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, a TWA pilot who became involved in drug smuggling for the Medellín Cartel and later turned into an informant for the DEA. The 2017 film is driven by a script penned by Gary Spinelli and has been described as “a fun lie based on a true story.” While the movie takes creative liberties and departs from reality in many aspects to enhance its drama and narrative, it also incorporates elements of truth from Seal’s life.

Barry Seal was indeed a commercial airline pilot who began his career with Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1964. Impressively, at the young age of 26, he became one of the youngest Captains to operate a Boeing 707. Seal’s passion for flying was evident from a young age, as he obtained his student pilot’s license at just 15 years old. Additionally, he joined the Louisiana Army National Guard in 1961 and served with the 20th Special Forces Group for six years. It wasn’t until around 1975 that Seal ventured into drug smuggling, initially starting with marijuana and eventually transitioning to cocaine by 1978.

In the film, Barry Seal’s involvement with the Medellín Cartel is portrayed as a result of coercion, where he was abducted and left with no choice but to cooperate. However, in reality, his connection to the cartel began differently. In 1979, Seal was apprehended in Honduras with a substantial amount of cocaine, approximately 40 kilograms. He was subsequently incarcerated in a Honduran jail for nine months. It was during this time that he had a chance encounter with the New Orleans business manager of Jorge Ochoa, a key figure in the Medellín Cartel and was even nicknamed “El Gordo.” The Ochoa Family, along with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar and others, were the founders and leaders of the Medellín Cartel.

‘American Made’ takes a significant departure from reality regarding Barry Seal’s involvement with the CIA. There is no concrete evidence to prove that the CIA directly intercepted his smuggling business and recruited him for their operations. However, there have been allegations, rumors, and conspiracy theories suggesting that the government turned a blind eye to Seal’s illegal activities because they may have been utilizing his services to transport weapons to Nicaraguan rebels.

During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, the U.S. government secretly supported the rebels in their efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Communist Sandinista government. Pilots like Barry Seal were indeed employed to transport weapons to the rebels. Still, Seal’s direct and official connection to CIA operations in this regard remains unproven and subject to speculation. The movie dramatizes this connection for narrative purposes, but the real-life details are far more complex and controversial.

In 1983, Barry Seal’s long-standing evasion of the DEA came to an end when he attempted to smuggle a massive shipment of 200,000 units of Quaalude, a recreational drug, into the United States. His arrest unfolded at the hands of customs officers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Faced with an imminent 10-year prison sentence, Seal pursued various avenues to escape incarceration. Initially, he sought a deal with a U.S. attorney, offering to provide information about the Ochoa family in exchange for leniency. However, this proposition was declined. In a bold move, he secured a meeting with Vice President George H.W. Bush’s anti-drug task force, hoping to demonstrate his potential as an informant.

Subsequently, they referred him to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Recognizing Seal’s extensive knowledge and intricate connections within the cartel, the DEA eventually accepted his offer. Seal officially became a federal informant in March 1984. His cooperation proved invaluable, resulting in numerous convictions and the indictment of high-profile figures like Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa. While the film ‘American Made’ presents a somewhat patriotic facet of Barry Seal’s character, it’s crucial to acknowledge that the actual Seal was motivated by substantial financial gain. Per court records, he reportedly commanded exorbitant fees, earning up to $500,000 per flight for smuggling cocaine into the US.

By 1983, Seal’s amassed earnings reportedly reached an astounding $60 million, establishing him as one of the wealthiest individuals in the country. In the realm of drug smuggling, Seal’s illicit activities resulted in the transportation of an estimated $3 to $5 billion worth of drugs, including approximately 56 tons of cocaine, into the US. ‘American Made’ skillfully blends elements of fiction with the actual historical context, offering an entertaining cinematic experience and serving as an intriguing entry point for delving into the complex realities of the cartel’s dominance during that era.

Read More: American Made Review: Tom Cruise Delivers This Time

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Deleted Scenes

Jb goes to church, tv delivery, plane auction, barry crashes into sheriff's station, schafer in cia meeting, featurettes, american storytellers, cruise & liman: a conversation, in the wings, shooting american made, flying high, the real barry seal, theatrical trailer, rotten tomatoes® score.

American Made might push Cruise further along his evolution to more interesting, character-based roles. One doesn’t expect an immediate return to iconic roles like Vincent Lauria or T.J. Mackey, but hopefully Barry Seal is just the start.

"American Made" is southern-fried Scorsese Lite, a gumbo of decadent deviance masking over a sharp spice of potentially fatal risks.

Regardless of its exciting story and sharp ending, the film contains almost no lasting consequence and feels more like an adventure than the story of a real-world scandal, rather troublingly so.

[The movie] is phenomenal. ... This is brilliant casting ... It's Gleeson's performance as the institutional representative that sells the film's recklessly excessive 80s vibe.

There's more character work in any episode of Breaking Bad or Narcos than American Made's entire 115 minute running time but Cruise's movie does have a sense of humour about itself that makes for an amiable, if not memorable, watch.

Despite a strong Tom Cruise performance, the movie is as generic as its title.

There was a time when I looked forward to a Tom Cruise motion picture.

It just sort of putts along, rough around the edges and unjustifiably confident in itself, like a rich guy wasted on cocaine.

Worth watching to see Tom Cruise as good as he's been in years.

American Made is one of the best kinds of biopics: A tale that makes me want to explore the story further and find out more about its subject. Even if only half of this film is true to life, it's still 100% crazy.

Additional Info

Genre : Action, Comedy
Release Date : September 29, 2017
Languages : English, Spanish
Captions : English
Audio Format : 5.1

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American Made (2017)

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Tom Cruise, E. Roger Mitchell, and Mike Pniewski in American Made (2017)

Quotes

Barry Seal : I'm the gringo who always delivers.

Barry Seal : Schafer?

Monty 'Schafer' : Who is "Schafer"?

Barry Seal : [Barry records his last confession on video tape before his assassination] You know I guess you could say I helped build an army, defend a country and create the biggest drug cartel this world has ever seen. DEA, CIA, White House. I mean, it's been a hell of an adventure. Yes sometimes a little more than I bargained for. But goddamn, you try telling me that this ain't the greatest country in the world?

Barry Seal : Guys. It ain't about room, alright? It's about weight.

Barry Seal : I'm not working for TWA no more.

Lucy Seal : No shit, Barry! Are you going to prison?

Barry Seal : No, Ma'am.

Barry Seal : Either I fly the big fella or I fly your product.

Dana Sibota : Well you hit the trifecta, didn't ya? I mean... guns, drugs, money laundering. And the state of Arkansas is gonna rip the bark right off of you, boy. We are gonna put you in a four by six cell for the rest of your life.

Barry Seal : Ma'am, that's a long time

[Barry is sitting cuffed to a bench in a room full of DEA officers and agents]

Barry Seal : Did you all know that Caddies have more trunk space than any other car? I'll give each and every one of you a Caddy for your troubles, Because I'm going to walk out of here and there ain't a damn thing any one of you can do about it.

[just then Dana Sibota walks in]

Dana Sibota : He's free to go.

DEA Agent Winter : Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute.

[Barry's hands are uncuffed]

Barry Seal : You boys should have taken the Caddies.

[holding a duffel bag]

Lucy Seal : Roscoe dug this up in the backyard. There are bills blowing around everywhere.

Barry Seal : I'll rake it up in the morning.

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Product Description

Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible) delivers a riveting and unforgettable portrayal of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's Academy Award-winning masterpiece. Based on a true story, the acclaimed film follows the young Kovic from a zealous teen who eagerly volunteers for the Vietnam War, to an embittered veteran paralyzed from the mid-chest down. Deeply in love with his country, Kovic returned to an environment vastly different from the one he left, and struggled before emerging as a brave new voice for the disenchanted.

4K Restoration from the Original Camera Negative Supervised and Approved by Director Oliver Stone
Presented in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos
Audio Commentary by Film Critic Matt Zoller Seitz
Dolby Atmos Mix Supervised and Approved by Sound Mixer Michael Minkler
Audio Commentary by Co-Producer, Co-Writer and Director Oliver Stone
Restoration from the Original Camera Negative Supervised and Approved by Director Oliver Stone

Product details

MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.8 x 5.38 x 0.51 inches; 7.04 ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Oliver Stone
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Subtitled, 4K, Collector's Edition
Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 24 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ November 12, 2024
Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Stephen Baldwin
Producers ‏ : ‎ A. Kitman Ho, Oliver Stone
Studio ‏ : ‎ SHOUT! FACTORY
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DCWSPRT4
Writers ‏ : ‎ Oliver Stone, Ron Kovic
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2
#1 in Military & War (Movies & TV)
#4 in Drama Blu-ray Discs

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6 Best Tom Cruise Movies for Sci-Fi Fans

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Tom Cruise has been one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for decades now. And while he stands tall on the mantle of action heroes, few realize that he has also starred in some of the most memorable sci-fi movies of all time.

It was in the 1980s and '90s that Cruise broke out as a global megastar with hit after box office hit . From Days of Thunder and Risky Business to his Oscar-nominated role in Jerry Maguire , Cruise took his sweet time to sculpt himself into the leading man audiences still cannot get enough of. But it was in 2002’s Minority Report that fans caught a whiff of Cruise’s talents in the sci-fi genre.

From there, Cruise dove headfirst into some of the most imaginative sci-fi movies, some better than others. He outran an alien invasion in 2005’s smashing hit War of the Worlds , and more recently, fought a rogue AI in 2023’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One . While Cruise will likely always be hailed as one of Hollywood's greatest action stars thanks to him doing all his stunts, this list proves that he's just as prolific an actor in other genres.

6 Oblivion (2013)

Directed by Joseph Kosinski and based on his unpublished graphic novel of the same name, Oblivion is a mesmerizing sci-fi thriller that takes place in 2077, on an Earth left empty and in ruins after a war with aliens.

Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a repair technician, and Andrea Riseborough plays Victoria, his communications partner. They are the only people stationed on the barren planet, and once their mission is accomplished, Jack will be able to join the rest of the survivors on a fellow colony. But as Jack begins seeing glimpses of a mysterious woman in his dreams, he is compelled to rescue her, which then leads to a string of events that alter his reality and make him question his purpose.

A Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Gem Worth Returning To

Oblivion offers a truly unique and visually aesthetic sci-fi experience and there isn’t a single speck of doubt about it. Director Joseph Kosinski wove a narrative that was part mystery, part thriller, and all spectacle. And perhaps that’s the movie’s detriment. In its attempt to pay homage to the popular tropes of 80s and 90s sci-fi, the movie ends up lacking originality, is predictable, and progresses at a dull pace.

Oblivion grossed $286 million at the worldwide box office, making a profit against its $120 million production budget, but critics panned it for being overly ambitious. As for Cruise, the actor gives this gorgeously filmed romantic thriller his best. His perceptive performance brings subtle humanity to a man coming to terms with his reality and reassessing the meaning of his existence. But the dramatics and complexities of his character keep him underutilized , making Oblivion the least exciting sci-fi movie of his career.

5 Vanilla Sky (2001)

In Vanilla Sky , Tom Cruise’s David Aames, the owner of a large publishing company, has it all – wealth, looks, and popularity. But after a car accident leaves his face severely damaged, he finds his mind trapped in a surreal state of dreams. He grapples with his reality and chooses to undergo reconstructive surgery, using science for his own personal gain. However, his post-surgery life is stranger. He experiences delusions and the line between reality and memory blurs. David finds it hard to understand just how much control over his fate he had and it affects his business and relationships.

Vanilla Sky

Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe reunite after "Jerry Maguire" for "Vanilla Sky," the story of a young New York City publishing magnate who finds himself on an unexpected roller-coaster ride of romance, comedy, suspicion, love, sex and dreams in a mind-bending search for his soul.

A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole of a Warped Reality

Cameron Crow’s twisted and hard-to-follow psychological thriller is a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes . It plunges viewers into the disorienting reality of its protagonist, whom Cruise plays by abandoning his charm. Paired with co-stars Penélope Cruz and Cameron Diaz, as well as Crowe’s savvy direction, Cruise navigates complex motives and uncanny situations by showcasing vulnerability and desperation in equal measure.

Vanilla Sky is a daring swing at the genre as it tries to bring heavy themes of consent and consciousness to life with the help of surreal plot twists and beautifully engaging visuals. But it left audiences and critics polarized . They acknowledged the ambition but deemed the plot an “incoherent jumble,” and also pointed out that the movie was “a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.” While it is hard not to compare it to Cruise’s collaboration with Stanley Kubrick in 1997’s Eyes Wide Shut (which is undeniably better), Vanilla Sky has gained a cult status over time.

9 Best Tom Cruise Movies That Don't Rely on Action and Stunts

Mostly known for being Hollywood's quintessential action star, Tom Cruise has done some good non-action flicks and these are the best.

4 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

It’s true, none of the Mission: Impossible movies are technically sci-fi, but with this latest installment, the franchise steers into time-relevant concepts and incorporates artificial intelligence as the villain . In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most death-defying assignment yet. They must track down a terrifying new weapon that can destroy all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. The journey takes Ethan across the globe – from the busy streets of Rome to the icy landscapes of Norway, all while facing off against the Entity, a powerful rogue AI.

A Stunt Spectacle That Tops all the Movies in the Franchise

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is a direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Fallout . It stands out for its intricate storytelling and breathtaking action sequences . McQuarrie’s direction is impeccable; it weaves together the suspense, drama, and high-octane chases in a way that upholds the bar for action cinema. Cruise also delivers a stunning performance and is supported by a talented cast including Hayley Atwell , Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg.

Another blockbuster in the franchise, it keeps the saga feeling fresh over 25 years later, and not just because Crise performed yet another dangerously thrilling stunt, but also because it stepped out of the action genre and infused elements of science fiction into the narrative . It revolves around an advanced AI system capable of manipulating and controlling global events, posing a threat to humanity. The use of CGI to make stunts more innovative and seamless also calls for admiration.

3 War of the Worlds (2005)

A loose adaptation of H. G. Wells' 1898 novel of the same name at the hands of Steven Spielberg, War of the Worlds opens with a narration from Morgan Freeman, who states that the extraterrestrials are plotting against humanity. We follow Ray Ferrier, a divorced American dockworker, who finds himself in a rut when his ex-wife drops his two kids off at his house for the weekend. When mysterious lightning strikes the area and kickstarts the events of an alien invasion, Ray tries to protect his two children and embarks on a journey to reunite them with their mother.

War of The Worlds (2005)

Thrives on its atmosphere of tense apocalyptic thrills.

War of the Worlds , along with Speilberg’s The Terminal and Munich , is part of an unofficial “trilogy” that captures the terror and hysteria that spread across America after the tragic events of 9/11, but unlike the other two, this sci-fi thriller offers a unique, but horrifying, vision of an alien invasion singularly through the eyes of Tom Cruise’s Ferrier. He delivers a grounded yet gripping pe rformance as a shaken father enduring various levels of fear for the sake of his children. Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin are equally impressive in their roles.

The movie, with its gleaming cinematography and grim atmosphere, brings a sense of realism to the Tripods, which tower over urban landscapes and are unflinching in their violence. For packing a haunting punch, Spielberg’s film received widespread acclaim . It grossed $603 million at the global box office, earned three Academy Award nominations, and influenced a new wave of thought-provoking, bleak, and visceral alien invasion thrillers.

10 Underrated Tom Cruise Movies Worth Revisiting

Apart from major franchises like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible, the actor has worked great on films that have flown under the mainstream radar.

2 Minority Report (2002)

The first time Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise collaborated , they struck gold. Yes, we’re talking about the sci-fi cyberpunk thriller, Minority Report , which takes place in a futuristic Washington, D.C., where law and order is maintained through the use of three gifted psychics – known as “precogs” – who predict murders and crimes before they are committed.

Precrime chief John Anderton joins the program after his son is abducted and his wife leaves him. When the precogs foresee Anderton’s own killings, he becomes a suspect and goes on the run. At the same time, Anderton tries to discover the truth about his fabricated future and the precogs’ manipulated visions.

Minority Report

A true benchmark for visionary storytelling.

Spielberg brought Philip K. Dick's 1956 novella, The Minority Report , to thriller cinematic life and examined dense themes of free will and predetermination. Cruise’s lead performance is the nexus of the film ; his hero is nuanced and willing to explore the deepest philosophical frontiers of Spielberg’s script. Cruise has Colin Farrell’s wry support, who acts as the Department of Justice in the shining metropolis.

Upon release, Minority Report received enormous applause from critics , who simply could not stop gushing over the technical marvels, seamlessly advancing plot, high-octane action, and the balance between futuristic spectacle and profound examinations of justice, ethics, and power. It earned an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Editing and took home four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction for Spielberg.

1 Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Before an alien race known as “Mimics” invaded Earth in 2015, Major William Cage was a public relations officer lacking any combat experience. He finds himself thrown into a do-or-die war against an alien army that’s well-versed in adapting to attacks.

In a bizarre twist of fate, even after he’s killed in battle, Cage awakens, relives the same morning, and realizes that he’s the only person on Earth who can re-experience the events of the day. The time loop is torturous, but Cage teams up with Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski, gains the upper hand over the ruthless extraterrestrial, and finally archives victory.

Edge of Tomorrow

A cleverly executed sci-fi thriller.

It is a tough call choosing between Minority Report and Edge of Tomorrow since both movies are such excellent edge-of-your-seat thrillers. The latter, under deft direction from Doug Liman, is an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel titled All You Need Is Kill . Liman transforms the source material into a witty and exhilarating blockbuster.

Of course, Cruise forms an electric duo with Emily Blunt as the two traverse the intricate mechanics of the time loop and keep the shocking reveals coming at us. While the action and mecha sequences are fun, Edge of Tomorrow’s real triumph lies in its ingenious take on a beloved trope.

The movie snagged critics’ praise for Liman’s phenomenal direction, Cruise’s work as both an action and a sci-fi hero , as well as the leads’ chemistry. They also made note of the visual mastery and the “expertly designed Mimics,” both of which were effective elements in influencing the genre. Edge of Tomorrow may have had a lukewarm box office reception, but it gained fans steadily and became Tom Cruise’s most entertaining sci-fi movie of all time.

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The Best '80s Movies These 32 Actors

The greatest hits of the greatest actors of the greatest decade!

The 1980s was not just a great time for movies but for the people in them. Many of our all-time favorite actors got their start in '80s movies (or at least started to hit it big during that time).

The question is, in what film did these stars hit their peak of cinematic brilliance during that decade? Let's see if we can provide an answer by looking at the best '80s movies starring the most iconic '80s actors , in our opinion.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard)

While the TV series Moonlighting made Bruce Willis a household name, playing John McClane, a New York cop at war with violent German thieves in an LA high-rise on Christmas Eve, made him a movie star in 1988. However, Die Hard might be the actor's best film in any decade, let alone the greatest action movie of all time.

Sigourney Weaver (Aliens)

Fans have been debating which is the best Alien movie for years but no one disagrees that James Cameron 's Aliens is the best Alien movie of the '80s. The 1986 sci-fi movie classic , in which our human protagonists take on plenty more than just one vicious extraterrestrial this time, saw Sigourney Weaver reprise Xenomorph survivor Ellen Ripley to Academy Award-nominated acclaim.

Jack Nicholson (Terms Of Endearment)

The single most iconic Jack Nicolson performance from the 1980s, arguably, comes from the horror movie classic, The Shining . However, we chose to highlight his Academy Award-winning performance in director James L. Brooks' tragic 1983 Best Picture Oscar winner , Terms of Endearment , as Garrett, who forms a complicated relationship with his widowed next-door neighbor, Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine).

Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally

Meg Ryan (When Harry Met Sally...)

Meg Ryan made up one of Hollywood's most beloved onscreen couples with Tom Hanks , but we loved her the most in the '80s when she was falling in love with Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally ... Considered one of the greatest rom-coms of all time , director Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron's clever and sweet 1989 favorite traces the titular duo's evolution from enemies, to friends, to lovers over the course of 12 years.

Tom Cruise (Top Gun)

Everyone had the need, the need for speed, in 1986 when director Tony Scott 's romantic, action-packed instant classic, Top Gun , ruled the box office, captured the hearts of audiences everywhere, and spawned an acclaimed blockbuster sequel in 2022 called Top Gun: Maverick . If Tom Cruise was not a movie star before then, there was no doubt he was at the top of A-list after giving his all as daredevil Navy pilot, Maverick.

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Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice)

There are few actors with as much esteem in Hollywood as the great Meryl Streep , who earned her second Academy Award for her mesmerizing, heartbreaking performance in the title role of Sophie’s Choice . Writer and director Alan J. Pakula's adaptation of William Styron's passionate novel follows the relationship between a Polish woman who survived the Holocaust and a Jewish-American man (played by Kevin Kline) who is obsessed with the tragedy.

Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice)

The all-time best Michael Keaton movie and performance might always be up for debate but no one can deny that, in the 1980s, no film saw him demonstrate his high-energy comedic talents and versatility better than Beetlejuice . The Oscar nominee plays the title role of Tim Burton 's 1988 horror-comedy classic (actually spelled "Betelgeuse") — a sleazy "bio-exorcist" begrudgingly enlisted by a recently deceased couple (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) to scare their home's new inhabitants out.

M'Lynn looking sarcastic while getting her hair done in Steel Magnolias

Sally Field (Steel Magnolias)

The 1980s was a great time for Sally Field, who won both of her Oscars during that decade — one for Norma Rae in 1980 and another in 1985 for Places in the Heart . However, we believe the one film that best encapsulates the actor's stunning range is the powerful, charming 1989 dramedy Steel Magnolias , in which she shines brightly among an ensemble cast including Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, and Julia Roberts as a close-knit group of Louisiana women.

Eddie Murphy (Coming To America)

There were few movie stars in the '80s bigger than Eddie Murphy, who made such a huge impact in very little time on SNL before hitting it big with feature-length classics like 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop . Yet, 1988's Coming to America was the first film to see him disappear into multiple roles and, not to mention, African Prince Akeem's search for love in Queens, New York, amounts to a hilarious and heartfelt story.

Molly Ringwald (The Breakfast Club)

The first face we tend to picture when we think of the Brat Pack is Molly Ringwald, who was the go-to young female actor for coming-of-age dramedies of the '80s, such as Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles . However, her best film — and, arguably, the greatest high school movie of all time — is writer and director John Hughes' The Breakfast Club , in which she and four of the decade's most essential stars (Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Judd Nelson) play a group of socially disparate teens who find unexpected kinship during Saturday detention.

Denzel Washington sitting in the middle of testimony in Cry Freedom.

Denzel Washington (Cry Freedom)

Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington received his first Oscar nomination for his moving portrayal of activist Steve Biko in director Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom . The 1987 film focuses primarily on the friendship between the influential Black anti-Apartheid activist and the white South African journalist Donald Woods (Kevin Kline), who puts his own life at risk to investigate Biko's death.

Jodie Foster (The Accused)

Not only does 1988's The Accused feature one of Jodie Foster's most powerful, Academy Award-winning performances, but it is also an enduringly relevant indictment of a flawed justice system that silences women. Foster plays Sarah Tobias, the victim of a violent assault who, along with her prosecuting attorney, Katheryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis), is challenged by a case that puts the blame on her.

Robert De Niro (Raging Bull)

Out of all of Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese's collaborations , none have been as unique and as moving as 1980's Raging Bull . De Niro delivers a roaring one-two punch in the masterful sports movie as real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, tracing his rousing success in the ring and his tragic self-destructive tendencies outside of it.

Cher (Moonstruck)

In 1987, Cher proved that she was a master in both the world of music and the world of acting with her Academy Award-winning performance as Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck . Soon after the widowed Italian-American woman agrees to marry her boyfriend, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), she finds herself falling deeper and deeper in love with his brother, Ronny (Nicolas Cage).

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders Of The Lost Ark

Harrison Ford (Raiders Of The Lost Ark)

One of Harrison Ford's all-time greatest characters is the rough, resourceful, globe-trotting archeologist Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones. The iconic hero was first introduced in 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark — director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas' tribute to cinema that would later inspire countless tributes to its stunning visual design, John Williams' sweeping score, and its endlessly thrilling, wall-to-wall action.

Diane Keaton (Reds)

Diane Keaton is an absolute revelation in co-writer and director Warren Beatty's 1981 historical epic, Reds . She plays famed activist Louise Bryant who falls in love with radical-minded fellow journalist John Reed (Beatty) as he hopes to bring the ideals of Russia's Communist Revolution to the United States.

Robin Williams (Dead Poets Society)

The late Robin Williams gives us the best of both his comedic energy and dramatic authenticity in director Peter Weir's moving 1989 drama Dead Poet's Society . As English teacher John Keating, he serves as a much-needed role model to a close-knit group of Catholic boarding school students (played by rising stars such as Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard) who learn how to seize the day .

Michelle Pfeiffer (Scarface)

It was in the '90s when three-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer really began to hit her stride but her strongest work in the '80s is, arguably, Scarface . She stars in director Brian de Palma's 1983 gangster movie classic as Elvira Hancock, who becomes the wife of Cuban crime lord, Tony Montana (Oscar winner Al Pacino).

Morgan Freeman (Glory)

One of the most inspiring Morgan Freeman performances comes from 1989's beloved, moving war movie , Glory . The Oscar winner stars as Sergeant Major John Rawlins, who is the highest-ranked Black member of his regiment in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple)

Legendary comedian Whoopi Goldberg earned her first Academy Award nomination for her heartbreaking performance as Celie Johnson in 1985's The Color Purple . Director Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's seminal novel chronicles decades in the life of the Black, Southern woman as she endures dehumanizing adversity and traumatic abuse.

Kurt Russell (Escape From New York)

One of co-writer and director John Carpenter's best movies , 1981's Escape from New York , takes place in a war-torn future when Air Force One crash lands inside a maximum security prison that used to be the Big Apple and the President of the United States (Donald Pleasance) is taken hostage by the prisoners. The only one who can save him is a recently arrested, hardened war veteran named Snake Plissken, which is easily one of Kurt Russell's coolest roles and certainly one of his greatest performances.

Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction)

While we do not condone treacherous acts like boiling a family's pet rabbit alive, we would consider Alex Forrest to be a villain with understandable motivations , and not just because Glenn Close gives a brilliant performance in 1987's intense thriller, Fatal Attraction . It was married lawyer Dan Gallagher's (Michael Douglas) mistake to indulge in a one-time fling with the New York editor, who then misconstrues the affair for love and continues to taunt him and his family in increasingly horrifying ways.

Sylvester Stallone (First Blood)

Sylvester Stallone has played many iconic roles in many great action movies, especially in the 1980s, but his best role from that decade would have to be John Rambo in First Blood . The 1981 adaptation of David Morell's novel is not a conventional shoot-em-up thriller like the later Rambo movies but an emotionally charged, nuanced drama in which the burdened Vietnam veteran is pushed to the edge by a cruel sheriff (Brian Dennehy) and wages a war against a whole town.

Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn in Overboard

Goldie Hawn (Overboard)

Many of Oscar winner Goldie Hawn's most memorable roles see her sharing the screen with her real-life romantic partner, Kurt Russell, and the couple's chemistry was at an all-time high in director Garry Marshall's Overboard . Hawn stars in the inventive and charming 1987 rom-com as a spoiled socialite with amnesia who is convinced by a carpenter (Russell) that she is his wife and the mother of his four boys to get back at her for her cruel treatment.

Bill Murray (Ghostbusters)

Academy Award nominee Bill Murray is one of the most beloved comedic talents of the '80s (or any decade, really) and to understand why, all you need to do is watch 1984's Ghostbusters . Also one of director Ivan Reitman's best movies , the spooky, kooky classic sees Murray's masterfully witty Peter Venkman team up with Ray Stantz (writer Dan Aykroyd), Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) to rid New York of its scariest spirits.

Geena Davis (The Accidental Tourist)

Geena Davis earned an Academy Award for her wonderfully eccentric performance in 1988's The Accidental Tourist as Muriel Pritchett. Emotionally distant travel writer Macon Leary (William Hurt) meets and begins to fall for the free-spirited dog trainer after splitting with his wife (played by Kathleen Turner), following the death of their son, in director Lawrence Kasdan's moving dramedy.

Kevin Bacon (Footloose)

It is no wonder why Chris Prat's Peter Quill regarded Kevin Bacon's role in Footloose as one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history. Ren singlehandedly brought dance back to the cruelly repressed small town of Bomont in the timelessly entertaining music movie from 1984.

Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone

Kathleen Turner (Romancing The Stone)

The ultimate romantic adventure comedy would have to be director Robert Zemeckis' 1984 hit, Romancing the Stone . Kathleen Turner is wonderful as novelist Joan Wilder, who enlists the help of a rogue mercenary to help rescue her kidnapped sister in Colombia and ends up joining him on the search for a prized artifact.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator)

The film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger the leading action movie hero of the 1980s remains his best action movie from the decade, as far as we are concerned. The Austrian bodybuilder gives a pitch-perfect, ice-cold performance as one of the best '80s movie villains — the cybernetic title role of James Cameron's The Terminator , which is sent from a war-torn future to prevent the birth of humanity's savior by killing his mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).

Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in Nine to Five

Jane Fonda (9 To 5)

After taking the '70s by storm as one of the decade's biggest and most acclaimed stars, Jane Fonda started off the 1980s right with 9 to 5 . In the hilarious workplace satire, her character, Judy Bernly, teams up with fellow office assistants Violet (Lily Tomlin) and Doralee (Dolly Parton) to turn the tables on their nightmare of a boss (played by Dabney Coleman).

Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man

Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man)

In his second Academy Award-winning performance, Dustin Hoffman plays autistic-savant Raymond Babbitt in Barry Levinson's Best Picture Oscar winner , Rain Man . He stars opposite Tom Cruise as his younger brother, Charlie, who gets to meet him for the first time in this beautiful family story from 1988.

Daryl Hannah (Wall Street)

You can find Daryl Hannah in many of the '80s' most iconic cinematic classics but the cream of the crop would have to be Wall Street . She stars in Oliver Stone's riveting 1987 drama as Darien Taylor, who once shared a romance with corrupt stockbroker Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) and begins a relationship with his ambitious protege, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen).

Jason Wiese writes feature stories for CinemaBlend. His occupation results from years dreaming of a filmmaking career, settling on a "professional film fan" career, studying journalism at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO (where he served as Culture Editor for its student-run print and online publications), and a brief stint of reviewing movies for fun. He would later continue that side-hustle of film criticism on TikTok (@wiesewisdom), where he posts videos on a semi-weekly basis. Look for his name in almost any article about Batman.

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Tom Cruise's most underrated action movie is now on Netflix

W hen you think of Tom Cruise movies , the first action movies that come to mind are probably the Mission: Impossible movies or the Top Gun movies. Those are two of the most successful action franchises featuring Cruise, so that makes sense.

Despite Cruise being well known in the action space for those movies, along with the death-defying stunts performed while making those movies, there's another of Cruise's action movies that often gets forgotten.

That movie is Edge of Tomorrow, which premiered in 2014, and it's back on Netflix celebrating the film's 10-year anniversary! If you're looking for what to watch on Netflix, you can't go wrong with Edge of Tomorrow .

Netflix adds Edge of Tomorrow on Sept. 7

Netflix announced in August that Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow would return to Netflix on Sept. 7. We just checked the movie is available to stream! It's not on the Netflix Top 10 for movies yet, but we expect it'll be there by the end of the weekend.

Edge of Tomorrow, which boasts a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , is such a good movie! The film also stars Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, and Brendan Gleason.

In the film, Cruise stars as Major William Cage, who is a critical member of the resistance to defeat a race of Aliens who have taken over Europe. Unfortunately, Cage gets stuck in a time loop. Every time he is killed in the offensive, he wakes up the morning of the attack. To break the loop, Cage must find a way to save humanity. He enlists the help of Sergeant Rita Vrataski, played by Blunt, to accomplish the task.

Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth wrote the screenplay for the movie. Doug Liman directed the film. Cruise and Liman also worked together on American Made, which was super popular on Netflix earlier this year.

More notably, Cruise reunited with McQuarrie for Edge of Tomorrow after working on Valkyrie and Jack Reacher. Following Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise and McQuarrie worked together on three Mission: Impossible movies, including Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning. They'll also be working on another Mission: Impossible movie together, as well.

Doug Liman says Edge of Tomorrow 2 is still possible

According to a report from Variety in July, director Doug Liman said that Edge of Tomorrow 2 is not officially dead. It was officially announced in 2019, but it's been pretty quiet since then.

This summer, Liman revealed to Empire Magazine that he and Cruise still talk about Edge of Tomorrow 2, but there's still nothing set in stone.

Fans have been asking for the sequel since the first film premiered. It will be very interesting to see if it happens. Cruise and Blunt are two of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood. It's likely that they are booked for quite a while with existing projects, but hopefully, something could be worked out.

For now, you can watch Edge of Tomorrow, one of Cruise's best and most underrated movies, on Netflix! We'll share more updates about the potential sequel as we find out.

This article was originally published on netflixlife.com as Tom Cruise's most underrated action movie is now on Netflix .

The 10 Most Thrilling Steven Spielberg Movies, Ranked

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To say that Steven Spielberg is one of the most important directors of all-time would be a significant understatement , as there may not be another living artist who has done as much to reshape the way that cinema is perceived. In addition to essentially creating the modern blockbuster and summer movie season, Spielberg has helmed many all-time classic films, including an Academy Award winner for Best Picture with Schinder’s List .

There are few filmmakers who know how to capture action and suspense quite like Spielberg , who is always pushing the boundaries of what is possible on screen with his inventive use of technology. Although Spielberg has certainly made some slower, more serious films, he is best associated with the pure feelings of exhilaration that viewers have when leaving the theater on a high note. Here are the ten most thrilling Steven Spielberg movies, ranked.

10 ‘The Sugarland Express’ (1974)

Starring goldie hawn and richard dreyfuss.

The Sugarland Express was the first theatrical film that Spielberg directed after his debut project Duel was released on television, and it certainly proved that he was a filmmaker to watch. The car chase thriller starred Goldie Hawn and Richard Dreyfuss as outlaws who outrun authorities in Texas, only to attract the attention of the local media outlets that hail them as trailblazers.

The Sugarland Express is one of the most fast paced films of Spielberg’s entire career , as the momentum of the chase rarely slows down. On a psychological level, The Sugarland Express is one of the most dynamic films he has made, as it fits within the “New Hollywood” era themes of focusing on morally dubious characters that don’t ascribe to traditional notions of heroism. Additionally, the use of Texas iconography felt like Spielberg was adding his own tribute to the western genre.

The Sugarland Express

A woman attempts to reunite her family by helping her husband escape prison and together kidnapping their son. But things don't go as planned when they are forced to take a police hostage on the road.

Rent on Amazon

9 ‘Bridge of Spies’ (2015)

Starring tom hanks and mark rylance.

Bridge of Spies was a more mature spy thriller from Spielberg , as it explored how the brilliant American lawyer James Donovan ( Tom Hanks ) came to negotiate for the freedom of two military pilots by working out a deal with a Russian spy ( Mark Rylance ). The film perfectly captured the Cold War paranoia of the era, as it is clear that any breakdown in communication between the United States and the Soviet Union could result in a conflict with significant civilian casualties.

Bridge of Spies is able to explore the threats that Donovan faced at home , as his family was threatened by political extremists for supporting the Constitutional rights of a spy to be tried fairly in court. While it’s light on action, the sequences of aerial ascension that Spielberg includes in the beginning are just as exciting as any action film that he has directed.

Bridge of Spies

8 ‘west side story’ (2021), starring rachel zegler and ansel elgort.

West Side Story is one of the few remakes that is better than the original, as Spielberg was able to expand on the story of the 1961 original by giving more depth to the Hispanic characters. Although the touching romance between Tony ( Ansel Elgort ) and Maria ( Rachel Zegler ) is just as moving as it is in the original, Spielberg was able to show how the ethnic tensions resulted in frequent conflicts between volatile young men.

Spielberg’s use of blocking and lighting results in a captivating period piece that captures the state of economic despair that the urban communities in New York City were in during the aftermath of World War II. It’s a shame that West Side Story under-performed at the worldwide box office, as it is a modern musical masterpiece that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen imaginable.

West Side Story

Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.

Watch on Disney+

7 ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ (1989)

Starring harrison ford and sean connery.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a brilliant sequel that featured some of the most captivating sequences in the entire Indiana Jones franchise. The opening scene featuring River Phoenix as a younger version of Henry Jones Jr. was a great way to introduce a new adventure, but the tank chase and motorcycle escape ensure that the film never loses its sense of momentum.

Indiana and the Last Crusade is a particularly thrilling sequel because of how emotional it is, as each action sequence seeks to further complicate the relationship between Indy ( Harrison Ford ) and his father ( Sean Connery ), whose relationship has been in shambles for decades. The film also features an amazing turn from Julian Glover as the Nazi sympathizing billionaire Donovan, whose brutal attacks on Indy’s father make him one of the most evil Indiana Jones villains ever.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

In 1938, after his father goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones finds himself up against the Nazis again to stop them from obtaining its powers.

6 ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993)

Starring sam neill and jeff goldblum.

Jurassic Park is one of the most perfect films of its decade , as Spielberg was able to use groundbreaking computer generated imagery to truly bring the dinosaurs of Michael Crichton ’s novels to life; ironically, the visual effects in Jurassic Park are so good that they put the design of the modern Jurassic World sequels to shame.

Jurassic Park is brilliant because it takes its time getting to the reveal of the dinosaurs , creating suspense as to when they will eventually reign free and start picking off the human characters. Spielberg was smart to include only a few moments with the Tyrannosaurus Rex in order to avoid overexposing the creature, as shocking deaths that it causes certainly rank among the most violent moments in any PG-13 movie. Jurassic Park proved that summer blockbusters could be smart, scary, and filled with heart.

Jurassic Park

In Steven Spielberg's massive blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park's mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.

5 ‘Munich’ (2005)

Starring eric bana and daniel craig.

Munich is one of the darkest films of Spielberg’s career , as it explored the violence between secret service agencies in Israel and Palestine that is just as relevant today as ever before. Spielberg creates a masterful spy thriller that examines the lengths that groups will go to in order to achieve revenge ; an opening sequence detailing the horrific terrorist attack at the Munich Olympic Games is one of the most haunting moments that Spielberg has ever put on film.

Munich is particularly thrilling because of its ambiguity , as Spielberg was unwilling to present an easy solution to the conflict that would leave the audiences walking out with a clear conscience. While it’s not always an easy film to watch, Munich is proof that Spielberg is by no means the “safe, warm-hearted” filmmaker that he is often unjustly accused of being.

4 ‘Minority Report’ (2002)

Starring tom cruise and samantha morton.

Minority Report is one of the more predictive films that Spielberg has made , as it seemingly got ahead of the debate about surveillance and law enforcement long before it became the subject of international discourse. While the ways in which Spielberg brings to life a lively version of the future are quite impressive, Minority Report is unafraid to look at the shady ways in which governmental forces would be able to take advantage of experimental technology with unclear ethical parameters.

Minority Report is a great noir story with amazing set pieces, and features Tom Cruise in one of the most uncharacteristically vulnerable roles of his career. While Minority Report includes some haunting commentary about the necessity of holding those in power accountable for their actions, it's the depiction of a grieving parent that makes the film so impactful on an emotional level.

Minority Report

Watch on Paramount Plus

3 ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)

Starring tom hanks and matt damon.

Saving Private Ryan is quite simply one of the greatest war movies ever made , as Spielberg captured the sacrifices that veterans made in a brutal depiction of World War II. While the now iconic opening scene that recreates D-Day started the film off on a particularly thrilling note, the film gets more emotionally complex when Captain Hiller ( Tom Hanks ) and his team are sent deep into enemy territory to rescue Private Ryan ( Matt Damon ) and return him home safely to his family.

Saving Private Ryan is a film in which major characters die at unexpected moments , and does not shy away from exploring the disturbing tactics taken in such a critical conflict. Although some have accused the film’s ending scene of being too saccharine, it only feels odd when compared to the thrilling work of pure spectacle that preceded it.

Saving Private Ryan

Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

Watch on Prime Video

2 ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981)

Starring harrison ford and karen allen.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a pure masterpiece of action and adventure, allowing Spielberg to create the style of 1930s film serial with a purely exhilarating experience. The opening boulder chase in which Indy recovers the Golden Idol is an amazing character introduction, but it's one that soon fades into memory as Indy is met with new dangers on his search for the Ark of the Covenant and reunion with Marion Ravenwood ( Karen Allen ).

The entire Indiana Jones franchise is successful because it merges fantasy with history , and Raiders of the Lost Ark finds a perfect antagonist with the Nazis during the years before the beginning of World War II. Although the truck chase and marketplace shootout are terrific set pieces, the final moments in which the powers of the Ark are unleashed is a work of madcap horror filmmaking that may rank as the single scariest sequence that Spielberg has ever created.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.

1 ‘Jaws’ (1975)

Starring roy scheider and richard dreyfuss.

Jaws is everything that a summer blockbuster should be , so it's not surprising that Spielberg’s most influential film went on to inspire a complete sea change in the way that Hollywood made movies. Spielberg’s decision to only tease the appearance by the shark before finally revealing his hand was a masterstroke that ended up heightening the level of suspense throughout. As a result, the few gory moments that Spielberg does end up including feel even more shocking.

It would be impossible to discuss Jaws and not mention the Academy Award-winning musical score by John Williams, which became more iconic than the film itself. Williams and Spielberg have one of the most important working relationships in Hollywood history, and the suspense that is created from the simple notes in the Jaws theme music was enough to give generations of moviegoers all sorts of wild nightmares.

Jaws (1975)

When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.

Watch on Max

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Steven Spielberg

Watch Tom Cruise Bite It Over and Over Again on Netflix Right Now

Cruise lives, Cruise dies, Cruise lives again.

Tom Cruise has made some of the best action blockbusters of all time , is keeping practical stunt work alive in an era of CGI goop, and is arguably the last true cinematic superstar… but sometimes, don’t you just want to punch him right in his smug face?

Admit it. He’s got that cocky grin that says he knows just how charismatic he is. He’s 62 and in better shape than most of the people reading this. And then there’s the Scientology and its associated scandals that we all try to ignore because he’s really, really good at ramping motorcycles over and off of a wide variety of objects. Deny it all you want, but director Doug Liman knows you think Cruise should be taken down a notch. Why else would Liman choose to cast him in a movie where he gets killed again, and again, and again?

Edge of Tomorrow, which has hit Netflix just months after its 10th anniversary, has frequently had its premise compared to a video game, as Major William Cage gets stuck in a time loop on the eve of a desperate offensive meant to push back a long and brutal alien invasion. Cage uses this newfound power to slowly and painstakingly turn the tide of a losing struggle as he memorizes the movements of the octopian “mimics,” growing more effective against them every time he resets the day he’s trapped in.

But this would be boring if Cruise began the movie as a confident badass à la Ethan Hunt, so instead he plays against type as a smarmy cur. Introduced as a public affairs officer so scared of combat that he tries to blackmail a general rather than be introduced to it, he’s thrown into a platoon that despises him and promptly gets himself killed on what’s essentially D-Day with aliens and power suits. But he takes an unusual-looking mimic down with him, and its black blood gushes into his mouth right before he wakes up to Bill Paxton’s sass, just like he did when the day began.

It's a fun sci-fi twist on the classic Groundhog Day premise, as Cage gets his feet under him, memorizes everything there is to know about his fellow soldiers, and slowly progresses from hapless rookie to relentless killing machine as he begrudgingly embraces the destiny that’s been thrust upon him. And to do this, he dies. He dies so often.

Cage’s first battle is disorienting, but every subsequent attempt goes just a little bit smoother.

Cage is shot, blown up, bludgeoned, run over, drowned, ripped apart, and foiled by gravity. Sometimes his demise is predictable, sometimes it’s planned, and sometimes it’s completely out of nowhere. Done differently, this could be dark, but Cage makes such a terrible first impression that it’s amusing to watch his struggles, right up until his sheer doggedness begins to win you over.

Aiding Cage on his journey to competence is Sergeant Rita Vrataski, who Emily Blunt plays as everything Cage is not. A stoic slaughter machine, the so-called Angel of Verdun led humanity to its only major victory, because she was the only soldier to stumble into the alien’s time-travel powers before Cage got his unwitting hands on it. With humanity’s sole advantage having accidentally passed from a one-woman army to a self-centered sleazeball, it’s up to Vrataski to whip Cage into shape while avoiding the ire of superior officers who would either dismiss them as crazy or turn them into lab rats.

Cruise’s arrogant smarm is a fun foil to Blunt’s straight-laced soldiery, especially when Vrataski doesn’t hesitate to put Cage down like Old Yeller and restart the day the moment a training session goes awry. It’s a simple but effective dynamic, as Vrataski’s companionship encourages Cage to put the rest of humanity before himself, and Cage, in turn, opens her mind to some sneakier forms of warfare.

Edge of Tomorrow is powered by Blunt and Cruise’s strong rapport.

Seeing the duo fight, train, scheme, and bond is the highlight of the film, as the stars quickly establish a rapport that keeps all the death and failure from getting too heavy. Based on the Japanese novel All You Need is Kill, the movie’s light, pulpy roots are evident in the exoskeletons soldiers wear and the Cloud Strife-worthy sword that Vrataski lugs into battle for no good reason beyond the fact that it looks rad. These touches help spice up the otherwise unremarkable sci-fi action, and while the climax throws out much of what made the rest of the film work in a clunky attempt to up the stakes, by that point you’ll be invested enough to happily finish.

Edge of Tomorrow was Cruise’s last foray into sci-fi before he began churning out Mission: Impossible sequels, while Blunt, aside from A Quiet Place and its even quieter sequel, has left the genre behind as well. That’s a shame, because with all due respect to Blunt’s contributions to the art of drama in Oppenheimer, Sicario, and Sherlock Gnomes , it would be a joy to once again see her grimace and grunt as she guns down aliens. Cruise, meanwhile, would do well to remember that if he ever finds himself amid scandal again, all he needs to do is play a cowardly jackass we still can’t help but root for… once he gets what’s coming to him.

Science Fiction

Which movies were filmed in Kentucky?

The magic of Hollywood is that oftentimes movies aren't filmed anywhere near where they purport to be taking place. California may be home to Hollywood, but so many of your favorite films were set against backdrops far removed from the glitterati of the West Coast.

With huge studios like Warner Bros., MGM, and RKO Pictures churning out film after film during the heyday of the silver screen, California made a name for itself as the cornerstone for all things movies. As the industry has continued to shift, however, that has begun to change.

From the need for more rural settings to a director's desire to get everything as historically accurate as possible, not to mention the attractive tax incentives offered by states outside of California, crews are increasingly enticed to look elsewhere when filming. More and more, shoots take place in the most unexpected places in a quest to entertain, and sometimes, to make film history. Have you ever wondered where the Cullen house in the "Twilight" movies actually is? (The answer is Oregon.) How about the location of where the wasteland astronauts trekked in "Planet of the Apes" from 1968? (Answer: Arizona.)

With that in mind, Stacker compiled a list of movies filmed in Kentucky using data from Movie Locations . Additional information about each film was collected from IMDb . Some films may have been omitted due to data dissimilarities and lack of corresponding information found on IMDb.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

- Director: John Huston - IMDb user rating: 7.8 (29K reviews) - Runtime: 112 minutes - Genres: Crime, Drama, and Film-Noir - Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, and Jean Hagen

Eight Men Out (1988)

- Director: John Sayles - IMDb user rating: 7.2 (21K reviews) - Runtime: 119 minutes - Genres: Drama, History, and Sport - Cast: John Cusack, Clifton James, and Jace Alexander

Goldfinger (1964)

- Director: Guy Hamilton - IMDb user rating: 7.7 (198K reviews) - Runtime: 110 minutes - Genres: Action, Adventure, and Thriller - Cast: Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, and Honor Blackman

The Great Race (1965)

- Director: Blake Edwards - IMDb user rating: 7.2 (19K reviews) - Runtime: 160 minutes - Genres: Action, Adventure, and Comedy - Cast: Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Jack Lemmon

How the West Was Won (1962)

- Director: Directors - IMDb user rating: 7.0 (23K reviews) - Runtime: 164 minutes - Genres: Romance, War, and Western - Cast: James Stewart, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck

The Hustler (1961)

- Director: Robert Rossen - IMDb user rating: 8.0 (85K reviews) - Runtime: 134 minutes - Genres: Drama and Sport - Cast: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, and Piper Laurie

The Ides of March (2011)

- Director: George Clooney - IMDb user rating: 7.1 (228K reviews) - Runtime: 101 minutes - Genres: Drama and Thriller - Cast: Paul Giamatti, George Clooney, and Philip Seymour Hoffman

The Insider (1999)

- Director: Michael Mann - IMDb user rating: 7.8 (177K reviews) - Runtime: 157 minutes - Genres: Biography, Drama, and Thriller - Cast: Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, and Christopher Plummer

Lawn Dogs (1997)

- Director: John Duigan - IMDb user rating: 7.4 (8.4K reviews) - Runtime: 101 minutes - Genres: Drama - Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kathleen Quinlan, and Mischa Barton

A League of Their Own (1992)

- Director: Penny Marshall - IMDb user rating: 7.3 (117K reviews) - Runtime: 128 minutes - Genres: Comedy, Drama, and Sport - Cast: Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, and Lori Petty

Rain Man (1988)

- Director: Barry Levinson - IMDb user rating: 8.0 (534K reviews) - Runtime: 133 minutes - Genres: Drama - Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Valeria Golino

Raintree County (1957)

- Director: Edward Dmytryk - IMDb user rating: 6.3 (4.2K reviews) - Runtime: 182 minutes - Genres: Drama, Romance, and War - Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Eva Marie Saint

This story features data reporting by Karim Noorani, writing by Olivia Monahan, and is part of a series utilizing data automation across 48 states.

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Class of 1999

The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances

Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.

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A photo collage shows Tom Cruise in various poses and with various expressions from “Magnolia” and “Eyes Wide Shut.”

By Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson is the author of “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor,” examining 10 signature performances.

“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.

The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.

‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”

Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued .

Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.

At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.

Cruise hoped Kubrick would change their ho-hum streak, disregarding the hard-won wisdom he’d learned more than a decade earlier when he dinged his post-“Risky Business” momentum to play a forest imp in Ridley Scott’s “Legend.” That flop also suffered from a metastasizing shooting schedule (four months turned into 12) and an auteur more focused on style than emotional substance. After returning from Britain, he told Rolling Stone that he felt like merely “another color in a Ridley Scott painting.”

“I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,” he vowed. Well, he had. He’d even gone back to Pinewood Studios in London.

KUBRICK WAS NEVER an actor’s director. His staggering filmography included only two performances nominated for an Academy Award: Peter Ustinov in “Spartacus,” and Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (only Ustinov won). Kubrick’s genius was the star. On “Eyes Wide Shut,” a passion project since the 1960s, his casting priority wasn’t talent — it was convincing a married couple to enlist. (His first choice was Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.) Tabloid scrutiny was what Cruise and Kidman believed they’d gone to the great master to escape, only to have Star magazine allege that Kubrick had to hire on-set erotic experts to teach them how to make love. (Cruise not only denied the accusation, but sued over it.)

Fans expecting nudity should have known better. Despite earning the title People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1990, Cruise disliked pitching himself as an object of desire, refusing to let marketers promote his first blockbuster, “Top Gun,” with shirtless photos of him playing volleyball. In four decades, he has filmed only one genuinely erotic scene — his first-date clinch with Renée Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire” — and a couple of giddy tone-benders that combine sex with death ( torturing a victim in “Interview With the Vampire”) or sex with musical comedy ( duetting with Malin Akerman in “Rock of Ages”).

But Cruise bore the blame when the peek into his life fans had been promised turned out to be a pent-up study of male insecurity. (At an early screening of “Eyes Wide Shut,” LA Weekly reported walkouts and one viewer huffing an expletive.) Critics expecting a charismatic performance at least were also disappointed, with many dismissing Cruise as flat and out of his depth.

“Stanley was not that specific about what he wanted,” Kidman told Time Out London. Yet, Cruise, who developed an ulcer during the film, never said a word against Kubrick, even after filming 95 takes of walking through a door. To this, let me add that it seems difficult for any actor to build a character when they’ve got no idea which one of a hundred versions their director wants — and there’s reason to question whether Kubrick was even using Cruise’s best takes. As the editor Gordon Stainforth said of splicing together “The Shining,” good performances were often rejected in favor of “the most eccentric and rather over-the-top.”

WHILE IN LONDON, CRUISE watched “Boogie Nights” and learned that its director, Anderson, also happened to be in town. Cruise invited him to the set and afterward, Anderson pledged to write him something “un-turn-downable,” as he explained to The New York Times. Six months later, Anderson sent him a script with another sexually frustrated character: a self-proclaimed “master of the muffin” who never even touches a woman onscreen (and the women he knows find him obnoxious). Humping the air for his rowdy male acolytes, Frank might just be a locker-room faker, a try-hard hysteric, an immature blusterer who tries (and fails) to impress a female TV journalist by vaulting into a mostly naked backward somersault with his pants bunched around his ankles.

Cruise was 36 and, for the first time in his career, he would be older than his director — a new-school ’90s Sundance darling. Still, he was determined to impress Anderson, too.

“He’s like, ‘Do you want me to stand on my head, do you want me to do back flips? I’ll do it, I’ll do anything you want,’” Anderson recalled to Rolling Stone .

Cruise’s Frank Mackey is an electric performance — a huckster Elvis roiling with hostility — and in my opinion it should have won him an Oscar. (I say this with zero offense to Michael Caine, who took home the supporting actor prize for “The Cider House Rules” and joked affectionately that the prestige would have lowered the mega movie star’s price tag.) Statuette aside, Cruise deemed it “the perfect character to play after Bill Harford.” Kubrick bottled him up; Anderson cut him loose.

Yet, Bill and Frank share key points of connection. Bill learns that sex is danger, with missed connections involving one sex worker with H.I.V. and another who ends up possibly murdered. Frank’s mission statement is “Seduce and destroy” — and he seems most passionate about inflicting pain. Neither character enjoys the raunchy thrills people imagine he’s enjoying, and both of them hide their real selves under masks (the wealthy doctor literally) as they set out to convince the world of their success and power.

Bill stalks the East Village believing he wants to even the score with his wife, but he’s just piqued there’s an even richer and more powerful crowd that hasn’t yet invited him to their secret orgies. And Frank has buried his entire past — the years caretaking for his late mother, the rage and hurt he feels toward his estranged father, his own last name — to resurrect himself as a carnal superhero whose mind-control powers appear to work only on other men.

The films even share two identical scenes. The first is a long, mute stare as Cruise’s characters discover themselves completely emasculated by women they’ve underestimated — a crucial pivot point in both movies. The second comes in a climactic collapse before the family member who cut them so deeply that they’ve dreaded coming home. Both men stumble toward the unconscious body of their bittersweet beloved — Bill’s sleeping wife, Frank’s dying father — struggling to keep their emotions in check. Then they burst into sobs.

Cruise’s own father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was “a bully and a coward,” he told Parade magazine in 2006. Like Frank, Cruise lopped off his dad’s surname to build his reputation on his own. The elder Mapother died of cancer just before his son flew to London for “Legend.” Cruise visited him on his deathbed. It was the first time they’d seen each other in years, but they didn’t talk about the past. Cruise just held his hand.

Not long after, he opened up about that last goodbye. “It cleared up a lot of kind of fog that I had about the man,” Cruise told Rolling Stone in that 1986 interview. “It’s all sort of complex. There wasn’t one thing I felt.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without my work,” he continued. “It gave me a place to deal with all those emotions.”

And “Magnolia” gave him a place to honor them. That two-minute take in which Mackey breaks down at his father’s bedside is the most naked Cruise has ever been onscreen — an authentically heart-rending moment of release.

I believe that the first two decades-plus of Cruise’s career, from that famous sunglasses-and-socks skid in 1983 to that infamous ( and overblown ) couch jump in 2005, is one brilliant, underestimated performance after another, a superstar dominion so dazzling that audiences missed the subtle acting underneath. Yet, even amid this rarefied winning streak, the films he released in 1999 stand tall as testimonies to his courage. Today, Cruise is more acclaimed for braving risky stunts, not risky roles. I hope he dares himself to bare it all for the camera again.

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IMAGES

TOM CRUISE as Barry Seal in Universal Pictures' "American Made." (2017
Barry (TV Series 2018-2023)
Barry Seal : AMERICAN TRAFFIC (Tom Cruise, 2017)
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COMMENTS

American Made (2017)
American Made: Directed by Doug Liman. With Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons. The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair.
American Made (film)
American Made (film)
American Made (2017)
American Made (2017)
American Made: True Story Behind Tom Cruise-Barry Seal Movie
The True Story Behind the Movie American Made
American Made vs. the True Story of Barry Seal
American Made vs. the True Story of Barry Seal
'American Made' Ending Explained: What Happened to Barry Seal?
The 2017 Tom Cruise film American Made is an unlikely true story, to say the least. Cruise plays Barry Seal, a real-life commercial pilot who ends up being recruited by multiple government ...
American Made (2017)
The true story of pilot Barry Seal, who transported contraband for the CIA and the Medellin cartel in the 1980s. ... Tom Cruise. Barry Seal. Domhnall Gleeson. Monty 'Schafer' Sarah Wright. ... Social. Reviews 2; Discussions 5; A review by fung0. 90 % Written by fung0 on December 31, 2017. American Made is a peculiar film, but a very enjoyable ...
Barry Seal: The Renegade Pilot Behind Tom Cruise's 'American Made'
In 2017, Barry Seal's life became the subject of a Hollywood adaptation titled American Made, starring Tom Cruise. The film never set out to be a documentary, according to film's director Doug Liman, who described the blockbuster as "a fun lie based on a true story," according to TIME. Surprisingly, American Made actually downplayed ...
American Made movie review & film summary (2017)
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 ...
American Made
American Made - Metacritic. Summary In this international escapade based on the outrageous (and real) exploits of Barry Seal, a pilot (Tom Cruise) is unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history. Action. Comedy.
Barry Seal: The real-life story behind Tom Cruise's character in
Tom Cruise's latest vehicle American Made, directed by Doug Liman, sees the A-lister play the infamous Barry Seal: a pilot who became a drug smuggler, who in turn became an informant, finding ...
Why Bill Clinton And George W. Bush Are Portrayed In A Tom Cruise Movie
American Made stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a real-life former airline pilot who embarked on a wildly successful cocaine smuggling operation between Colombia and a tiny airstrip in Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980s. Seal's exploits brought him into close contact with infamous figures like Medellín cartel kingpins Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega — and he was ...
American Made Official Trailer #1 (2017) Tom Cruise Thriller Movie HD
Tom Cruise stars as a daring pilot who gets involved in a covert operation that spans the globe in this thrilling movie based on a true story. Watch the official trailer of American Made and see ...
Watch American Made
Pilot Barry Seal transports contraband for the CIA and the Medellin cartel in the 1980s. 20,602. IMDb 7 ... Tom Cruise, Domnhall Gleeson, Sarah Wright Olsen Studio Universal Pictures. Other formats. DVD from $5.95. Blu-ray ... Find Movie Box Office Data : Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations: IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities:
'American Made'
'American Made' - The True Story Behind the Tom Cruise ...
What's Fact and What's Fiction in American Made
What's true-to-life and what's artistic license in Tom Cruise's new biopic about Barry Seal and Iran-Contra. ... The film has Seal becoming buddies with cartel kingpins Escobar and Ochoa ...
American Made is Inspired by the Real Life of Barry Seal
'American Made' is a high-octane thriller that stars Tom Cruise as Barry Seal, a TWA pilot who becomes embroiled in a world of espionage, drug smuggling, and covert missions. The 2017 film skillfully navigates the intricate political landscape of 1980s America, where government agencies use Seal's unique skills for their purposes. As the story unfolds, […]
American Made
American Made | Full Movie
American Made (2017)
American Made (2017) Tom Cruise as Barry Seal. Barry Seal : [Barry records his last confession on video tape before his assassination] You know I guess you could say I helped build an army, defend a country and create the biggest drug cartel this world has ever seen.
American Made
한국어. Your account. Sign In. American Made. Pilot Barry Seal transports contraband for the CIA and the Medellin cartel in the 1980s. IMDb 7.125min2017X-RayHDRUHDR. Comedy•Action•Exciting•Joyous. Rent. UHD$3.99.
Born On The Fourth Of July 4K UHD
Just read that the last movie that was shown at the old Pequa movie theater was the rabble rousing piece of trash: Rambo III. I'm sure Mr Kovic would not be thrilled with that fact, either. Unlike a more sobering, realistic portrayal of war, as was achieved with Born On The 4th of July, the Rambo films present the mass slaughter of war as cheap ...
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A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole of a Warped Reality Cameron Crow's twisted and hard-to-follow psychological thriller is a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes.It plunges ...
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(Image credit: Paramount Pictures) Tom Cruise (Top Gun) Everyone had the need, the need for speed, in 1986 when director Tony Scott's romantic, action-packed instant classic, Top Gun, ruled the ...
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Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt is now streaming on Netflix as of September 7, 2024. Edge of Tomorrow is one of Cruise's best and most underrated action movies.
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Bridge of Spies was a more mature spy thriller from Spielberg, as it explored how the brilliant American lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks) came to negotiate for the freedom of two military pilots ...
Netflix Just Quietly Added Tom Cruise's Last Great Sci-Fi Movie
Cruise has moved on from sci-fi to pump out Mission: Impossible sequels, but his last genre film is a fun twist on the time loop premise that puts the superstar through the wringer.
Which Movies Were Filmed in Kentucky?
Stacker compiled a list of movies filmed in Kentucky using data from Movie Locations, with additional information about each film collected from IMDb. ... Barry Levinson - IMDb user rating: 8.0 (534K reviews) - Runtime: 133 minutes - Genres: Drama - Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Valeria Golino. Raintree County (1957) - Director: Edward ...
Revisiting Tom Cruise's 'Eyes Wide Shut' and 'Magnolia' Performances
At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De ...
Mississippi River Odyssey Cruise Recommended Reading
Cruise NEW! Mississippi River Odyssey Revel in the charm of "America's Great River" as you set sail along the Mississippi. Admire the historic mansions and grand homes atop its bluffs, and delve into America's Civil War history. Delight in the region's famed Southern cuisine and sample Memphis's renowned barbecue, alongside artisan beers.

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American Made

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The True Story Behind the Movie American Made

Fact: Seal was an unusually talented young pilot.

Fact: He had a colorful personality.

Partly Fiction: He was married to a woman named Lucy and they had three kids.

Fiction: The government first took notice of his smuggling when he was transporting Cuban cigars.

Fact: He smuggled drugs in through the Louisiana coast.

Mostly Fiction: Seal was chummy with the leaders of Colombia’s Medellín Cartel, including Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers.

Fact: Seal offered to cooperate with the DEA to stay out of prison.

Contested: He worked for many years alongside the CIA.

Fact: Seal was assassinated in 1986.

More Must-Reads from TIME

American Made vs. the True Story of Barry Seal

Was Barry Seal recruited by the CIA while he worked for TWA?

Did Barry Seal resign as a TWA pilot to carry out covert operations for the CIA?

Is Domhnall Gleeson's character, Monty Schafer, based on a real CIA agent?

Did Barry Seal meet Lee Harvey Oswald?

Is Barry Seal's wife in the movie based on a real person?

Was Barry Seal really working for both the CIA and Pablo Escobar in the early 1980s?

What was the Iran-Contra affair?

When did Barry Seal begin smuggling drugs?

How did Barry Seal become a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel?

Did Barry Seal deal directly with Pablo Escobar and the other leaders of Colombia's Medellín Cartel?

Did Barry Seal have three children?

Did Barry Seal really crash land a plane full of cocaine in a suburban neighborhood?

Did Barry really move his operation from Louisiana to Arkansas?

How much money did Barry make smuggling drugs into the U.S.?

Why was the movie's title changed from Mena to American Made ?

Did Barry Seal's wife know that he was a drug smuggler?

Did the zero-gravity love scene really happen?

Did the cartel really kill Barry Seal's brother-in-law with a car bomb?

Is American Made a biopic?

Was Barry Seal as likable as Tom Cruise's American Made character?

Does Tom Cruise look like Barry Seal?

How was Barry Seal caught?

Did Barry Seal offer to become a federal informant to avoid prison time?

As an informant, did Barry Seal really bring back photos and drugs as part of his undercover work?

Did Col. Oliver North inadvertently get Barry Seal killed?

Did the cartel put a contract out on Barry Seal?

Why wasn't Barry Seal forced into witness protection?

Was Barry Seal assassinated in a parking lot?

Does director Doug Liman have ties to the true story?

Did Tom Cruise do all of his own flying in the movie?

How does Barry Seal's family feel about the movie?

Were two pilots killed during the making of American Made ?

American Made

Simon Abrams

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TIFF 2024: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Sharp Corner, The Quiet Ones

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Barry Seal: The real-life story behind Tom Cruise's character in American Made

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