A new Tom Cruise movie on a former U.S. airplane pilot who trafficked drugs for the Medellín Cartel is coming under fire for abusing the facts to attack former President Ronald Reagan on the Iran-Contra scandal.
"American Made," which is released nationally this weekend, "is one long, cheerful lie at the Gipper's expense," Kyle Smith of The National Review said Wednesday.
Cruise plays Barry Seal, a Louisiana pilot who was fired from TWA and then became a wealthy drug smuggler for the cartel in the 1970s and 1980s.
After he was caught by the federal drug authorities, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials.
Seal was murdered in 1986 by killers hired by Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín Cartel.
Among the many false facts in the movie is one scene in which Seal is shown trafficking drugs by plane while delivering CIA rifles to the Contras — but a Seal biographer said the pilot was not a CIA "employee or asset," Smith said.
"There is not one iota of credible evidence that Seal ever worked for the CIA or assisted them in any operations," former FBI agent Del Hahn is quoted by Smith as saying.
Hahn was involved with Seal's case and published a book on him that cited his court testimony and interviews, Smith reported.
His article also quotes Doug Liman, the son of the Senate's lead counsel in the Iran-Contra hearings, who directed the film, saying: "We're not making a biopic."
Smith noted Liman said that during filming he would create exploits for Seal: "Wouldn't it be fun if we did this, or funny if we did that?"
Liman also calls the film a "fun lie" in publicity notes, Smith said.
Smith concluded "'American Made' could have been called 'American Made-Up'" — calling it "an enormously contrived effort" by Liman "to reshape the tangle of that scandal into a larkish Tom Cruise adventure.
"Truth was not an impediment."
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