American Made (2017) on Netflix
In 1978, CIA officer Monty Schafer recruits TWA pilot Barry Seal for surveillance flights over Central America. Seal hides the job from his wife Lucy, and the Medellín Cartel seeks him out.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/10236,646 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Barry Seal flies commercial jets for TWA out of Baton Rouge and smuggles Cuban cigars on the side for spare cash. In 1978 a CIA case officer named Monty Schafer offers him better money to fly surveillance flights across Central America in a small plane fitted with cameras, on the condition that he tell no one, including his wife Lucy. Seal takes the job, photographs Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and is then sent to Panama as a courier between the agency and General Manuel Noriega. On that trip the Medellín Cartel picks him up. Jorge Ochoa, Carlos Lehder and Pablo Escobar need a pilot who can carry their cocaine into the United States.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about American Made (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A real plane crash during filming in Colombia on September 11, 2015 killed crew members Carlos Berl and Alan Purwin, founder of Helinet Aviation, and seriously injured pilot Jimmy Lee Garland.
- Although the film suggests Seal was recruited by the CIA while working for TWA, he denied in court that he ever worked for the agency; handler Monty Schafer was invented, and a 1996 CIA inspector general report found no evidence of illegal agency activity at the Mena airport.
- Director Doug Liman came up with the film's zero-gravity love scene himself, inspired after he and Tom Cruise accidentally collided in the cockpit while shooting a flight scene.
- Seal's third wife, Deborah, said her husband actually began smuggling drugs in 1975, not 1980 as the film suggests, and that the business started with marijuana before moving into cocaine.
- The real Seal was fired from TWA in 1974 for falsely claiming medical leave at a time when he was involved in a smuggling scheme.
- Screenwriter Gary Spinelli spent the summer of 2013 hunting for a project based on real events, looking for “little hidden pieces of history, small stories that affected larger global events”, and came across the Mena story.
- Although Tom Cruise reportedly gained weight for the role, the real Seal was an obese man who reportedly weighed 300 lb, a good deal heavier than the pilot Cruise plays on screen.
