Barry Seal: Only in America

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Movie
German title Barry Seal: Only in America
Original title American Made
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2017
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Doug Liman
script Gary Spinelli
production Doug Davison ,
Brian Grazer ,
Ron Howard ,
Brian Oliver ,
Kim Roth ,
Tyler Thompson
music Christophe Beck
camera César Charlone
cut Andrew Mondshein ,
Dylan Tichenor
occupation

Barry Seal: Only in America (Originally American Made ) is an American adventure tragic comedy directed by Doug Liman . The film plot is based on real events from the life of drug smuggler Barry Seal , who is recruited by the CIA to work on covert operations in Central America .

action

Barry Seal was once a pilot for the American TWA airline , but in the 1980s the previously honorable man became a drug smuggler who worked with drug barons in Colombia , using his experience and skills as a pilot. Business is getting better and better, but Seal soon finds himself in a Colombian prison after a police raid.

Seal is saved from DEA arrest and detention in a US prison because he is hired by CIA agent Monty Schafer. In his drug shipments, Seal is supposed to be supplying the right-wing Contra fighters in Nicaragua with US arms, whose guerrilla war against the democratically elected Sandinista government is supported by President Ronald Reagan .

Seal taking its flights from an air base in Mena in the hinterland of Arkansas , where a military training ground for the Contras for the dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty is. Because he not only delivers US weapons for the Contra rebels, but also continues to smuggle drugs, Barry becomes one of the richest men in the US as an undercover CIA agent. Not only does he hoard it at several banks, but also in suitcases, hat boxes, and bags, and bury it in the garden of his home in rural Arkansas.

Seal's useless brother-in-law JB ("Bubba") moves in with him and needs a job; he starts stealing money from the seals and is arrested after the local sheriff catches him with a briefcase full of laundered cash.

As soon as Bubba is released on bail, Seal gives him money and a plane ticket to Bora Bora and tells him to go for his own safety. Bubba demands cash every week and insults Lucy. When Barry chases after him, Bubba is killed in his car by a bomb placed by the Medellin Cartel , which previously promised to "deal with" the Bubba problem.

Eventually, the CIA abandons the program and abandons Seal, who is simultaneously arrested by the FBI, DEA, ATF, and Arkansas State Police. Seal escapes prosecution by making a deal with the White House that wants evidence that the Sandinista are drug traffickers.

They ask Seal to obtain photos that link the Medellin cartel to the Nicaraguan Sandinista. Seal manages to get the photos, but the White House publishes them as propaganda against the Sandinista. Seal is featured prominently in the pictures, leading to his arrest and cartel revenge plans.

Seal is then sentenced to a court but only to 1,000 hours of community service. Seal moves from motel to motel and videotapes his experiences, fearing an explosion every time he starts his car.

Since his charitable work is done every night in the same building of the Salvation Army , Seal cannot hide from the cartel and is shot dead by murderers in the street. The CIA is destroying any evidence linking Seal. After Seal is dead, the CIA continues smuggling, using Iran instead to bring weapons to the Contras.

Biographical background

Tom Cruise took on the role of drug smuggler and later CIA employee Barry Seal Tom Cruise took on the role of drug smuggler and later CIA employee Barry Seal
Tom Cruise took on the role of drug smuggler
and later CIA employee Barry Seal

The film is based on real events. Barry Seal is considered one of the greatest and most successful drug smugglers in history. According to his own statements, the trained pilot had flown cocaine to the USA on behalf of Central and South American drug traffickers from the end of the 1970s until he was caught by the CIA in 1984 and became a key witness for the American drug control agency DEA . Seal then infiltrated the Medellín cartel as an undercover informant .

In February 1986, Seal was seven Colombian assassins in his hometown of Baton Rouge shot in the street just before it before a grand jury to testify would the US state of Arkansas, as his smuggling activity with covert operations was connected to the CIA.

The fate for his person was filmed in 1991 by Roger Young with Dennis Hopper in the leading role of Seal as a television film under the title The Drugs Cop aka In the Network of the Drug Mafia . Because Seal was the key figure in the so-called Mena scandal, Barry Seal: Only in America or American Made was initially shot under the title Mena .

production

Staff and construction

After the filmmaker Ron Howard was originally supposed to direct Barry Seal: Only in America , the task ultimately fell to Doug Liman . The script was written by Gary Spinelli . This landed on the blacklist of Hollywood's best unmoved ideas in 2014 .

Arthur L. Liman, the director's father, had served as one of the accusers in the scandal in the context of the US Senate investigation into the Iran-Contra affair . The Iran-Contra scandal only appears in the film as a casual closing note. Doug Liman sought historical authenticity with the characters, with an eight-year story arc telling the machinations of three US presidents, including Jimmy Carter , Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton , who was still governor of Arkansas at the time. Liman also shows Oliver North and General Manuel Noriega . The Iran-Contra affair came after the proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were passed on by the Reagan government to the right-wing Contras guerrillas in Nicaragua to support their fight against the Sandinista government. The support of the Contras was on the one hand a clear violation of a corresponding US Congress resolution, on the other hand the money was originally only intended for the ransom of US hostages in Lebanon .

Cast and dubbing

Tom Cruise took on the leading role of the drug smuggler and later chief witness for the American anti-drug agency DEA Barry Seal . Cruise had previously worked with Liman on his film Edge of Tomorrow . Jayma Mays played Dana Sibota, Domhnall Gleeson played Monty Schafer, and Caleb Landry Jones played Bubba. Barry Seal's wife Lucy is played by Sarah Wright in the film , and Benito Martinez played James Rangel. The future US President George W. Bush is played by Connor Trinneer . Jed Rees will play Louis Finkle and Willie will be played by Mike Pniewski .

The German dubbing was taken over by the Berlin FFS Film- & Fernseh-Synchron GmbH . The dialogue book was written by Alexander Löwe and the dialogue was directed by Dietmar Wunder . Patrick Winczewski speaks in the German dubbing Barry Seal, Constantin von Jascheroff took over the speaking role of Bubba, and Nico Sablik speaks Monty Schafer.

Filming

Filming began in Georgia on May 27, 2015. Filming locations in the USA include Cherokee , Clayton , DeKalb , Fulton , Gwinnett , Morgan and Pickens counties . From August 20, 2015, the shooting with Cruise took place in the Colombian city ​​of Medellín and from August 31, 2015 in Santa Marta . In a plane crash on September 11, 2015, two people were killed while filming in Colombia and several members of the film crew were injured, some seriously. A re-shoot took place in February 2017.

The working title of the film was Mena and refers to the location of the same name in Arkansas . Seal had parked his planes and helicopters at a notorious airport located there and equipped them with the most technically advanced radar systems of its time and developed protection against eavesdropping . In this way, much of the illegal activity could take place right in front of the eyes of Ronald Reagan , George HW Bush, and then-Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton .

Film music

The film music was composed by Christophe Beck , with whom the director most recently worked for the film Edge of Tomorrow . The film also features Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven , a disco adaptation of Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th Symphony , and Slippery People from Talking Heads . The soundtrack for the film was released on September 29, 2017.

Marketing and Publishing

At the beginning of June 2017, Universal Pictures Germany published the first German-language trailer for the film.

The film was released in German cinemas on September 7, 2017 and was released in US cinemas on September 29, 2017, a week later than originally planned.

reception

Age rating

In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over. In Germany the film is FSK 12 .

Reviews

The film has so far won over 87 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and has a Metascore of 65 out of 100 on Metacritic .

Jason Solomons of The Wrap says that while the film puts its fingers on the lies and interference of the US government, it feels easy. Nevertheless, there is no sense of the political absurdity of this era, so Solomons. Regarding Tom Cruise in the role of Barry Seal , the film critic says that he often plays him too controlled for one to feel his struggle for survival.

Katharina Grimnitz from epd Film says that Doug Liman's film not only combines humor, action and politics in an unexpectedly light-footed narrative, but also jumps on a train that has been racing through American pop culture for quite a while: "Films about antiheroes who reach for the big money with charm and bravado. "

Andreas Busche from Tagesspiegel says the film describes the delicate balance between politics and entrepreneurship in a kind of Halliburton fairy tale : “It is perhaps a sign of the times that Hollywood has recently been staging these true stories as heist comedies - with quick cuts, in attractive ones Colors [...] and padded in the cheerful cynicism with which Barry looks back on the madness of Reagan's drug war in old video recordings. ”Busche adds that this unleashed capitalism could also have been in muted colors, without retro-chic and an eighties soundtrack can tell, but this excessive will to style is probably the only chance to keep the madness of American politics at a distance.

Knut Elstermann from MDR Kultur thinks that this basically unbelievable story could have been told in an even more satirical, more pointed way, but it still seems absurd enough. Elstermann says of the lead actor Tom Cruise that he plays a daring juggler with a surprisingly fresh boyish charm, who believes he is a great doer and who is just a plaything for the ruthless powerful.

From the German Film and Media Review was Barry Seal: Only in America with the predicate particularly valuable provided. In the press release it says: with an excellent camera, well-made cuts and the typical vintage tint, the film is an eye-catcher from the start. It is also positive that the film, with its entertainment value, always includes the political dimension of the underlying story and names like Pablo Escobar and Ortega quickly evoke memories of bygone daily news reports, according to the jury. Furthermore, the script was particularly praised, which plausibly portrayed and explained the difficult balancing act of Seal in the role of husband and father. According to the jury, it is hard to believe that the crazy story of the drug smuggler, backed by the US government, was shot from a true story.

Gross profit

The film hit the box office in a number of countries after its launch, including Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Indonesia and Taiwan. The film's worldwide revenue from theatrical screenings so far is US $ 134.9 million. So far, the film has had 328,538 visitors in Germany.

Awards (selection)

National Film Awards UK 2018

  • Nomination for best international film

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Barry Seal: Only in America . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 170262 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ^ Age rating for Barry Seal: Only in America . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ In the network of the drug mafia In: cinema.de. Retrieved September 3, 2017.
  4. ↑ Alex Stedman: Tom Cruise's 'Mena' Pushed Back, Gets New Title In: Variety, August 8, 2016.
  5. ↑ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/american-made-review-1030579
  6. ↑ http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/american-made-review-tom-cruise-1202529678/
  7. ↑ a b http://www.thewrap.com/american-made-review-tom-cruise/
  8. ↑ Universal Starts Production on Doug Liman's Mena, Starring Tom Cruise In: comingsoon.net, May 27, 2015.
  9. ↑ Tom Cruise Gets Back to Work on 'American Made' Reshoots In: justjared.com, February 1, 2017.
  10. ↑ Christophe Beck to Score Doug Liman's 'Mena' In: filmmusicreporter.com, June 8, 2016.
  11. ↑ http://filmmusicreporter.com/tag/american-made/
  12. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  13. ↑ Angie Han: Tom Cruise and Doug Liman's 'Mena' Gets New Title, New Release Date In: August 9, 2016.
  14. ↑ Greg Evans: Universal Moves 'American Made', Away From Fox's 'Kingsman' In: deadline.com, April 22, 2017.
  15. ↑ American Made In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  16. ↑ Barry Seal: Only in America at Metacritic (English)
  17. ↑ Katharina Grimnitz: Review of Barry Seal: Only in America In: epd Film, August 28, 2017.
  18. ↑ Andreas Busche: Tom Cruise in 'Barry Seal - Only in America': The Gringo who delivers In: Der Tagesspiegel, September 6, 2017.
  19. ↑ Knut Elstermann: Film start: 'Barry Seal - Only in America': Playball of the Mighty ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: MDR Kultur, September 6, 2017.
  20. ↑ Jury's statement 'Particularly valuable' for 'Barry Seal: Only in America' In: fbw-filmbeval.com . German film and media rating. Retrieved August 24, 2017.
  21. ↑ https://mumbrella.com.au/tom-cruises-american-made-tops-weekend-box-office-467983
  22. ^ Nancy Tartaglione: 'Valerian' Tops China; 'Wonder Woman' Hits $ 400M Overseas - Int'l Box Office Final In: deadline.com, August 27, 2017.
  23. ↑ American Made In: boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
  24. ↑ Top 100 Germany 2017. In: insidekino.com . Retrieved July 17, 2018.
  25. ↑ Nominations For 2018 National Film Awards UK Announced In: nationalfilmawards.org, January 15, 2018.