Time Asia — October 10, 2017

TIME October 9, 2017

Time OffReviews

MOVIES

Gyllenhaal

only gets

Stronger

“BOSTON STRONG” MAY
have been the slogan that
city needed in the wake of
the 2013 Boston Marathon
bombing. But slogans mean
nothing in the face of life-
changing trauma, an idea
that vibrates through Jake
Gyllenhaal’s agile, unnerving
performance in David
Gordon Green’sStronger.
Gyllenhaal plays Jeff Bauman,
a real-life marathon spectator
who lost both legs in the
attack. The day he shows up
to watch his ex-girlfriend
cross the finish line (she’s
played, with steel-spined
grace, by Tatiana Maslany)
becomes the day that forever
changes his notion of what it
means to step up to the plate,
for himself or for anyone else.
Green’s film has a tense,
nervy energy, most of which
seems to glow from Gyllen-
haal’s very core. In one scene,
his anguished, hesitant cries
give us a sense of how painful
it is after an amputation to
have your dressings removed.
There’s both wildness and
weakness in him, an unruly
combination that we usually
c ll g l b
d f
it. S C K

△

TAPPED OUT

Ace pilot and ’80s

drug smuggler Adler

Berriman “Barry”

Seal, the real-life

inspiration for

American Made, often

conducted business

from pay phones—

which is how the FBI

eventually caught him.

r

fi p

h h d l ly

f d

MOVIES

Cruise, the smuggest of drug smugglers

Cruise and Wright: a

drug smuggler builds

a life for his family,

one kilo at a time

THE TRADEMARK TOM CRUISE CHARACTER IS THE

cat that eats the canary, looks around to make sure

everyone knows how awesome he is for getting away

with eating said canary—and then eats 10 more.

Cruise was practically born to star in Doug Liman’s

American Madeas Barry Seal, a onetime TWA pilot

from Louisiana who smuggled drugs for the Medellín

cartel before becoming a DEA informant. In real life,

Seal got away with all kinds of audaciousness, though

the odds did catch up with him: he was murdered, in

1986, by Medellín assassins.

InAmerican Made, Barry gets away with even more.

We watch as he goes to work for the CIA—his handler

is a classically inscrutable government foot soldier

played by Domhnall Gleeson—then enters a deal with

a wily Pablo Escobar henchman (Alejandro Edda).

Before long he’s diverting guns meant for Nicaraguan

contras to Colombian drug lords, grinning all the way.

Once in a while, he expresses vague worries about the

safety of his family, including multiple tykes and his

seemingly smart but still inexplicably loyal wife Lucy

(Sarah Wright).

Cruise plays Barry as an aw-shucks raconteur, and

the routine is amusing at first. But midway through

American Made, even Cruise devotees might decide

enough is enough. At one point, Barry gets thrown in

a scary Latin American jail and loses a tooth along the

way, his temporary jack-o’-lantern smile shining like

a beacon of human vulnerability. Cruise lets us have

a laugh over it, but that tooth gets fixed pretty fast.

We’re allowed to laugh with him, not at him. In the

Cruise universe, our job is to admire. —S.Z.

call courage, only because we
don’t have a better word for
t.—STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

Gyllenhaal as survivor

Bauman: The first step

is the hardest, closely

followed by the second

STRONGER: SCOTT GARFIELD—LIONSGATE/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS; AMERICAN MADE: DAVID JAMES—UNIVERSAL PICTURES (2)