American Made - The Biography of Barry Seal's Unique Life

When I saw the trailer to this movie few weeks ago, I was not so sure if this would be interesting. As my wife had mentioned it, it looked a bit like B class movie. However, since the main lead character was Tom Cruise, we decided to give it a try as usually his movies were generally good or full action. So when it premiered on Friday, we immediately bought the tickets. One interesting fact was the movie would only play in US cinemas in 4th week of September which was quite unusual as in the past few months, most movies were playing in US first before playing in Indonesia. Anyway, we should move on to the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Barry Seal (Tom Cruise - so many movies to his credits) was a pilot in the TWA airlines who flew to various countries from 1970s. While going through those trips, he was also doing some petty smuggling. But it was found out by a CIA agent named Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson - The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens etc) who decided to recruit Barry and use his wit and exceptional ability of flying various airplanes to do some reconnaissance work on South American countries. Barry was told by Schafer not to share what he was doing for CIA even to his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright - Walk of Shame). 

Central Intelligence - CIA Agent and An Accountant to Save the World?

After having a psychologically tiring day at the office, I felt the need to watch some funny stuff and fortunately, this movie (which I believe should be funny based on the trailer I've seen earlier) just premiered. Coincidentally, my wife was having the same feeling, so she agreed to watch this too and she helped me buy the tickets for 7.15PM show. Since the time was quite late, I still managed to have a bite before the movie started. There were some new trailers of the upcoming movies prior to the start of the movie, which made my wife and I ecstatic such as Tarzan, Ghostbusters, Independence Day:Resurgence and some others. Anyway, let's start with the movie itself.

Brief Story Line

Movie started with scene from 1996 where a young high school student was bullied for being different by some other students led by Trevor and thrown into the school hall naked where all students were present to hear speech from Calvin "Golden Jet" Joyner the student voted to be most likely to success. Calvin felt sorry and immediately gave his jacket so the boy can cover himself. He was very thankful to Calvin and ran out of the hall.

Twenty years later, Calvin now become an accountant and was feeling down after seeing his former assistant promoted to a partner in his firm faster than him. He expressed his disappointment to his wife Maggie who was his high school girlfriend (played by Danielle Nicolet) and rejected Maggie's request to go to the high school reunion since he wanted to avoid being asked how he was doing now and so on. 

When Calvin was at the office, he befriended with a guy called Bob Stone in Facebook who claimed to be his high school friend that was bullied 20 years ago. Calvin met Bob in a bar and was very surprised to see him changed into a very big, tall, muscular guy (played by Dwayne Johnson - Fast Furious series, San Andreas etc). He was even more surprised when Bob was apparently having a good fighting skill and fend off some bad guys in the bar.

After having a fun night, Bob requested Calvin's help to look into his personal offshore account, using Calvin's knowledge in forensic accounting. The account seemed to be an account used for bidding and after Bob accidentally dropped the coffee on the laptop, they stopped checking and Bob stayed for the night.

On the following day, few CIA agents led by Agent Pamela (played by Amy Ryan - Birdman, Goosebumps etc) came to Calvin's house to arrest Bob who was apparently a former CIA agent himself but selling a secret data that can open up the information of all agents around the world and murdered his partner Phil (played by Aaron Paul). Calvin who was surprised of these facts was forced to help CIA to capture Bob. He was used as bait and came to office where all hell breaks lose when Bob really came and made Calvin unwillingly became his accomplish. Calvin managed to escape from Bob and again asked by CIA agents to help them capture Bob. 

So will Calvin help CIA to capture Bob? Is Bob really the bad guy that CIA claimed to be? Is there some other explanation? Find them all till the completion of the movie.

End of Brief Story Line

My wife and I quite enjoyed the film. There were quite a number of fun scenes and some touching scenes. Kevin Hart gave a lot of funny remarks and I personally think that he was the star of this movie. He was quite believable as a high school student who seemed to be having the brightest future but fail to live up to expectation (at least according to himself). Meanwhile Dwayne Johnson gave a good performance in the fighting and action sequence. There was also a surprise showing of Jason Bateman as the older Trevor and cameo appearance by a famous funny actress before the end of the movie.

I believe this movie can be classified as action-comedy with emphasis on giving a strong moral message about the bad things of bullying as it would usually leave the person being bullied scarred for life. And the worst part was generally, the person who bully did not even realize or felt sorry for bullying just like it was pictured in this film. 

If you want to enjoy some fun, without over thinking and watching Kevin Hart's jokes combined with The Rock's fighting skills, this one certainly fits your liking. But please do not expect non-stop laughing as sometimes it was combined with the relationship scenes between the two of them. There were plenty of enjoyable scenes as well, but my most memorable scene was during the therapy session of Calvin, Maggie and Dr. Dan. 

Please do not leave your seat very fast as there were some funny bloopers/gag reel (scenes that did not make the movie as they were usually wrong acting, or the actors laughed at serious scenes etc). This would give you extra laughter.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi - A Michael Bay Film

A Michael Bay film? Yeah, I know that most people would trash his movies. But for action movie lover such as I, actually quite enjoy his movies. Usually it has the elements of grand action, some slow motion scenes, lots of explosions, car chases and special effects. I believe there is no need for me to mention what films he has directed.

Anyway, I watched this movie after I saw some tweets from CGV Blitz on 2 April 2016 promoting this film, giving 4 reasons why we should watch it. So, without hesitation, I watched it on the following day. 

Well, once the movie started, for the first 10 or 15 minutes, I was starting to think to myself, "what have I gotten myself into?". I truly felt at first that the film was too crowded, with unclear direction where it was going. And no major star actor did not help at all, especially with most of the main characters faces were all bearded and made me difficult to differentiate who was who. LOL.

The movie was shown in Libya in the year 2012, where after Muammar Gaddafi the leader/dictator was overthrown, the country was in chaos and seemed to be without law. US government wanted to help the country and they setup a CIA base in Benghazi with > 20 people working, gathering intel and so on. This base was guarded by 5 ex military people who became private military contractors called Global Response Staff (GRS) led by Tyrone "Rone" Woods (played by James Badge Dale). Other members were Mark "Oz" Geist (played by Max Martini), John "Tig" Tiegen (played by Dominic Fumusa), Kris "Tanto" Paronto (played by Pablo Schreiber) and Boon (played by David Denman). The newest member of the team, Jack Da Silva (played by John Krasinski) just came to Libya to be part of Rone's team. 

In the following half hour or so, we were shown the activities of the CIA members, but mostly the 6 GRS members in the base. It was shown that they were mostly family men who worked there more for financial reasons than patriotic reasons. We were also introduced to the Chief of the CIA base (played by David Costabile) who really dislike GRS. In addition there were also some other agents such as Sona (played by Alexia Barlier), Brit (played by Fredie Noma). Another noteworthy character would be Amahl, a Libyan who helped as translator for the CIA base. And of course Glen (played by Toby Stephens) who was also GRS officer but based in Tripoli.

On the 10th September 2012, the US ambassador Chris Stevens (played by Matt Letscher) was scheduled to come to Libya for maintaining diplomatic relationship. He would be accompanied by team of 2 men consisting of Scott and Dave. They were stationed in a large villa which was bullet proof with the size of 9 acres. Rone's team gave their worried assessments as the place was too large and the people guarding seemed to be inexperienced. Nevertheless, they promised to provide support if needed.

On the day after, due to the 9/11 anniversary, the ambassador was advised to remain at the villa and not go out at all. This would be where the film start to pick up the pace and I say, it was very fast moving forward. We would see that the Libyan militants launched heavy attacks to the villa using machine guns, rocket launcher and setting up fire.

With so few people guarding the villa since the local armies called 17-Feb militia left the compound for the US ambassador guards to fight by themselves, the situation became very critical. The GRS team felt very frustrated as they were not allowed to give aid by the Chief. 

So can Rone's team save the US ambassador? Can they save the CIA base from the attacks? All these would be revealed and rounded off in the 13 hours long of fighting which was compiled in the following 1.5 hour.

I admitted that I got "strapped" to my seat for that remaining part. Watching the movie would make you feel that you were actually in a real war zone. So I could not help but having small sense of relief every time there was like a short "break" during the attacks.

I pretty much had a great moment watching this film. This is based on a true story. The GRS team and CIA people, including the ambassador were real life persons. And by the end of the movie, we would be shown of what happened to the people involved after that 13 hours. I also felt that the GRS team started to grew on me after a while. There were also some very touching moments at the end of the movie, especially involving Jack and his wife Becky (played by Wrenn Schmidt) in addition to small humor here and there. 

For those who like Michael Bay film, this definitely is a must watched. It feels a little bit different from his other movies, but for sure you would like it. For those who do not like him, I still recommend you to try watching this one. It may change your mind a bit about his movies (though I am not counting on it).

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out 5 stars