This movie is lackluster, not very poignant, but OK entertainment

I wrote a list of things I didn't like about this movie, and it became rather long. The constant, nauseous camera movement (I used the word 'nauseous' correctly, just FYI), some of the irritating characters, historical inaccuracies, and so on.

However, this movie does not deserve any kind of full analysis, as there's REALLY not that much to it.

They took a very complicated real-world story, twisted it up to make it a 'hollywtf-movie', tailored it to Tom Cruise's 'typical character' style, took out most of what made the original story interesting, added lots and lots of noise and nonsense and implausible stupidities..

(I won't even mention the way-too-good TV quality for Atari 2600 RF signal and the fact that those kids would definitely not play THAT game, had they any choice or any sense - also, no one playing a game would just look at you for a long time that way - they'd be focused on the game.. why can't movies ever get these things right? Someone playing a video game in a movie looks about as realistic as when someone fake yawns or fake sneezes in a movie.. it's just not right)

The main problem of this movie, as interesting as the premise is, and as well-done some of the scenes are, that it really doesn't do anything much with it. A pilot falling asleep in the middle of a drug run? Impossible! I don't care how tired you are.. especially if the sleep is so shallow, they can be woken up by a simple wing-tap, which, OF COURSE, has to happen in a hollywood movie (in real life, I don't recommend trying it)..

This movie's entertainment value never exceeds the 'OK'-level. There are a few very juicy bits, as in the confidence that he will walk, and FBI agents laughing at him (the whole thing about Cadillacs and all)..

..but in the end, the annoying, constantly swaying or shaky camerawork starts to annoy you the more because you aren't getting your buck's worth of entertainment out of it.

You expect a more cerebral, more intricate story with more exposure on how corrupt the whole governmental structure is, and how the whole media circus was fake even in the 1970s and 1980s, just to give masses something to think about, while the real power was building behind the veil, invisible to the masses.

There's just a goofy drug smuggler flying around and doing deals and getting in trouble and not much else worth anyone's time.

When you know the real story, this movie just doesn't deliver.. what the movie shows you is a THIN slice of what could have been.

I guess that's the best word to describe this movie... the trailer promises a lot, the movie delivers very little. If you have seen the trailer, you have seen almost all the movie has to offer anyway.

It's very thin.. nothing much of substance. Even as junk food, this would not be very fulfilling.

It's an OK piece of entertainment to watch once, but you have seen movies like this before, you have seen drug stuff done better in Miami Vice of the 1980s, you have seen better airplane/action movies even by Tom Cruise, you have seen better courtroom drama even by Tom Cruise and so on.

He can be a phenomenal actor, I liked his performance in 'The Last Samurai' quite a lot, but in this movie, ... I mean, he's not wasted or anything, but if he really did fly a plane in this movie, it was never made obvious, as you don't see his face when they are showing the POV behind the pilot's back, etc.

This movie does not offer anything you haven't seen before, on any level, even though the real story is actually very interesting.

Still, it's not bad for a 'modern movie', because it doesn't have much of a 'woke message' or anything, it doesn't preach, it doesn't get in your face about anything, it does not nag that much (the wife, of course, is so predictable, but it's a bit unrealistic that Barry would be that passionate about humping his own wife, even if she's not that bad-looking).

This is kind of a hard movie to review, because there's so little anything to grasp that it all seems to fall through the fingers like sand.

The character motivations besides money and greed were not made all that clear, either.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the movie, either, there's just nothing that really grabs you.