2017 - AMERICAN MADE, a very entertaining Tom Cruise film

From Tom Cruise and the always erratic but interesting director Doug Lyman is one of those based on a true story films.  Cruise isn't playing his tiresome Ethan Hunter character this time. Instead he is a gun and drug smuggler named Barry Seal who appears to be working for the CIA.  He's running guns for the Contras in Nicaragua as part of a plot to destabilize the government under the Reagan Administration.  

 

At the same time Barry Seal was also smuggling drugs for the Medellín Cartel into the United States. This is almost a classic comedy farce as Seal has to juggle all these very dangerous South American bad guys while making boat loads of money.  But the reality is his activities affect a number of people's lives.  

 

Tom Cruise was always good at comedy and his character of a too smart for his own good criminal who finally runs out of cleverness is fun to watch.  The film has a good supporting cast with Domhnall Gleeson as his very sleazy CIA contact, Sarah Wright as his wife, smart enough to see what's going on but enjoying the money that Barry Seal is bringing in.  Also in an amusing role is Caleb Jones as the white trash brother in law whose stupidity starts to bring this whole house of cards down.

 

The director Doug Lyman was honest enough to admit that the film was only "based on" incidents in Barry Seals life  but you just have to spend a little time on the internet to see that a lot of the film wasn't that far from the actual truth.  A well made and very good film from Tom Cruise who can rise to occasion when he wants to instead of just playing it safe,

The film was written by Gary Spinelli, the running time is 115 minutes

2014 - EDGE OF TOMORROW aka Live Die Repeat

Edge of Tomorrow was the summer action film that received good reviews from most of the critics and failed to be the big blockbuster Warner Brothers Studio was looking for.  After watching this film I would include myself in the "why didn't this film take off" camp.  However, I will have to admit I did not rush out to see it this summer.

In spite of the good reviews, the thought of sitting through another Tom Cruise movie was just not very appealing.  It's unfortunate, because Cruise actually has to put in a little more work on his character in this film.  For a guy in his 50's he seemed to be getting slightly long in the tooth to be playing his usual smiling preppy character.  At least that was my thought anyway. 

I had no interest in putting up pictures of Tom Cruise again

Obviously the influence of Groundhog Day and video games is in this film.  But director Doug Lyman stages the film in such an entertaining way it's not a distraction but a clever way to tell the story of yet another alien invasion.   

Considering all the hard work that everyone obviously put into a fairly original film for a change Edge of Tomorrow should have done much better.  Unfortunately this film will only add fuel to the fire of promoting sequels and comic book franchise films.  Warner Brothers has learned its lesson and has announced that it will be making at least ten films based on DC comic book super heros.

Well in spite of all the baggage that this film carried, Edge of Tomorrow is a very good science fiction/action film.

113 minutes

2005 - MR AND MRS SMITH, is slick commercial junk.

A married couple are spies working for rival intelligence agencies.  Unknowningly, they have been hired to kill each other or something like that.  This is an action comedy which some critics thought was a metaphor for modern marriage.  In reality this is just another high concept soulless Hollywood film.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith has the glamor couple of Pitt and Jolie who brought a lot of their personal baggage to the production but probably pushed it over the top money wise with all the publicity they got with their off screen romantic antics on this film.

The director Doug Liman was the guy who kicked off the Bourne series with The Bourne Identity.  Liman knew his way around an action scene and they are all well done.  The problem is there are way too many of them particularly an extended shoot em up in a department store that makes this long film seem even longer.

An OK time killer that seriously wears out it's welcome after about an hour, the one joke premise would have played better at about 90 minutes or probably less.

120 minutes