SPOILERS AHEAD
It is the swinging seventies and the cold war is in full swing . CIA agent Monty Schafer ( played by Domhnall Gleeson ) surprises TWA pilot Barry Seal ( played by Tom Cruise ) by showing him photos of his smuggling of Cuban cigars , and asks him to join the CIA to fly reconnaissance missions over south America where communist revolution is brewing . Seal is a happy go lucky character who salivates at the thought of his own plane to fly and agrees without a thought . At home however his wife Lucy ( played by Sarah Wright ) has other ideas about the new 'job' which entails going without the perks of a regular salary , but Barry is too hooked to the adventurous life .
Soon the CIA asks Barry to act as courier between themselves and general Noriega of Panama , but here Barry's crooked side manifests itself . He agrees to fly drugs for the Medellin cartel into the USA . His expert flying skills come handy here as he has to fly from a small rough airstrip with a heavy load and has to fly between treetops . But he has a flair for drug smuggling . He even designates the spot where he will drop the loads in USA , overruling the ideas of the drug lords . The drug lords begin to call him 'the crazy gringo who always delivers' and begins to trust him .
But soon he is caught in drug lord Pablo Escobar's lair in a raid by anti narcotics police and the CIA has to rescue him as he is too useful to them . But now he is a slave of the CIA ; after all they can hand him over to the police . But the CIA has grander uses for him . They shift him and his family to a remote town called Mena in Arkansas , and his wife's severe objections to this shift are silenced by Barry by simply throwing what a woman is impressed by most---money what else .
In Mena Barry gets his own airfield to run guns supplied by the CIA for the contras in Nicaragua and soon his operations are expanded to more planes and more pilots . Money begins to flow in such vast amounts that the local bank opens a vault exclusively for Barry and the local sheriff turns a blind eye to the happenings . Wads of cash literally overflow in his house because in return trips after delivering guns Barry brings drugs into USA . Lucy is too happy as long as the money flows in and even brings her brother there . But the brother is caught by the sheriff laundering cash and in return for this perfidy he is killed by the drug mafia . Barry and his family are in a dangerous business indeed .
But the CIA is ever ready to help Barry whenever he is in trouble because he is so useful to them . We soon get to see Barry acquire an aura of invincibility in the film because even if the top lawmakers try to bring him to book , he is saved by the unseen hands of the CIA . He is worth it too . Only he knows how to avoid the patrols of drug police in the air , dodging them by flying low and slow whereas their planes are too fast and run out of fuel too soon . In fact , Barry and his cronies fly so slow that once one of them falls asleep and Barry has to jolt his plane's wing with his own plane's wing to wake him up .
The CIA then asks Barry to fly the contras to USA in order to train them . Mena town soon hosts a mini army of them , but many don't want to fight and disappear in the USA becoming illegal migrants . There are some hilarious incidents like the drug lords ordering their men to shoot down Barry in English and Barry and his co pilot cowering without realising that the man given orders does not understand English and a prank is being pulled off . The whole movie has this breezy air and seems to not take itself seriously . Tom Cruise too has done acting in a self mocking manner that has the audience sniggering at his air of breezy self confidence and his ability to get off serious trouble without a hitch .
But actually this is a very dangerous game . One mistake and you are gone . And this mistake is made by colonel Oliver North when he releases on live television pictures secretly taken by Barry which shows him in company with Pablo Escobar . The CIA once more saves Barry from the law , but from now on Barry is a man marked by the mafia for certain death....Lucy proves her loyalty to him by wanting to stay with him even in this hour of danger , but he forces her to stay separate for sake of the kids . His own days are numbered . He makes a video regretting not having asked more questions when the CIA recruited him , but now it is too late to save his own life....
The movie scores on acting , while colours and photography of the dense green jungles of central and south America is good . Also good is photography of Barry's famed flying skills .Background music is appropriate for the situations .
The whole scandal was occurred in President Ronald Reagan's presidency , and his support for the whole CIA operation is the secret of Barry's invincibility in front of the lawmakers who want to catch him . But the CIA's duplicitous nature is seen when they drop Barry like a hot potato and abandon him when their use for him is over . They even deny the existence of Schafer who was the agent who initially contacted Barry and destroy all papers related to the operation . Of course , Barry is crooked too and worth dropping as he is mixed with the drug mafia . The CIA turns a blind eye to this as long as it suits them but in the long run pawns like Barry have to be sacrificed for the sake of the security of the nation and the sanctity of the democratic order . Of course !!
Verdict---Good .
Three stars out of five .
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