American Made Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

2. The Incredibly Conventional Plot Structure

American Made is the latest in a long line of "crazy but true" adaptations of insane historical events, and uses a frame narrative where Cruise's Seal is relaying his story into a camcorder in the mid-80s.

It's a relatively unoriginal way to tell this kind of story and, above all else, is completely unnecessary. Thankfully it's not particularly intrusive and Cruise's narration is kept to a fairly polite minimum, but still, there's no reason the story couldn't have just played out in the fashion of a linear docudrama.

To this end the film's presentation belongs to the most stock, garden variety biopic formula, and would've certainly benefited from a little more streamlining.