This is the (partly) true tale of Barry Seal, an airline pilot recruited by the CIA to take aerial photos of South American coke camps. This morphs into his smuggling tons of the stuff for the Colombians, and finally into what was to become known as the Iran-Contra scandal. It all worked profitably well for Seal, until it didn’t.

It’s an interesting if generic crime story, and journeyman director Doug Liman’s somewhat superficial film tells it energetically. But what it’s saying has all been said before, and better. Goodfellas this ain’t.

I left the theater kind of depressed because first, it reminded me of one of America’s ugliest periods of shameless geopolitical manipulation (possibly its intent), and second, I had just sat through almost two hours of what Tom Cruise thinks is acting.
Say something nice, Don: It’s better than The Mummy. (115 min)