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When a Factory Relocates to Mexico, What Happens to Its American Workers?

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By Richard Davies

• Oct. 12, 2021

AMERICAN MADE What Happens to People When Work Disappears By Farah Stockman

Is there any invention as underappreciated as the ball bearing? These magical contraptions — a pair of concentric metal rings separated by steel balls — live hidden deep in the moving joints of all sorts of machines. Bearings reduce friction: Without them wheels would not spin. Anyone using a bicycle, car or train relies on the forgotten ingenuity of Philip Vaughan, an ironmaster from the Welsh town of Carmarthen who patented the idea in the 1790s. Until recently a debt was also often owed to the American hands at Link-Belt, a company that made the “Cadillac of bearings” in Indianapolis. In a mobile world, few workers are more essential.

In recent years much of this industry has migrated abroad. “American Made,” by Farah Stockman, traces the shock waves at the Indianapolis factory following the announcement in 2016 that Rexnord, its Wisconsin-based corporate owner, was relocating the plant to Mexico. Stockman, a member of The New York Times editorial board, has produced a gripping portrait of the human costs incurred when industries decline. Her book is a stark warning to towns and countries facing similar trends, and a lesson in how much economists can miss.

The story is told through in-depth interviews with three factory workers. Gender and race are central themes, and the lead figures are carefully chosen. Shannon Mulcahy, a white woman, is a veteran employee. She operates furnaces, a risky job that commands a solid pay package. Raleigh “Wally” Hall is a Black man who, after years on the factory floor, occupies a comfortable union position. John Feltner, a white man, is a newcomer and works as a machinist, cutting and shaping metal. All three, like Stockman herself, are in their 40s: old enough to remember better days, young enough to worry about what the remainder of their working lives will bring.

Jumping back in time, “American Made” plots each worker’s often turbulent history in vivid detail. Shannon’s early life featured violent and controlling male partners and degrading sexism at work; Wally dealt drugs as a young man, spent time in prison and has faced racism at the factory; John feels himself cursed, having moved from job to job as firms he worked for shut down. These back stories are related with abundant dialogue — as if Stockman had been present. This bold step blurs the line between recounted history and firsthand reporting. Some may see this as a liability, but the result is a book with a unified tone, one that places the reader in the homes of the workers as they struggle to survive.

For Shannon, Wally and John, making bearings is a means of climbing the economic ladder. Wages at the plant — $25 an hour — are above the U.S. average for manufacturing ($20 in 2016, $24 today). These workers become homeowners, make down payments on cars and consider sending their kids to college. Yet there is so much more to their jobs than the pay. There is camaraderie — Shannon feels braver after relationship advice from her co-workers, Wally takes solace in the factory bowling league and John mulls over his problems with his union brothers. These networks confer value not seen in economic statistics.

Workplace bonds run deep in manufacturing, and Stockman’s interviews capture this brilliantly. Operating heavy machinery is dirty and dangerous. It entails an added responsibility for co-workers — for one another’s safety — and a pride that comes with a reputation for being fast and efficient. At one point, Shannon’s phone rings on a day off. A furnace at the factory has had a power failure and her co-workers, dealing with explosive gases, need her advice. At home she cares for a disabled granddaughter, yet she is pleased to be disturbed. The call confirms her status and reputation, things that money cannot measure.

But 40-somethings belong to a generation for whom the number of jobs like this have disappeared. Manufacturing employment peaked in the summer of 1979 at around 19.6 million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 1980s and ’90s were tough, with nearly two million jobs lost, but the aughts were dreadful: About six million jobs vanished. The trend is not confined to the United States; in Britain, a quarter of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the 1980s, and nearly as many again in the 1990s. The Link-Belt workers see free trade with Mexico, which was supposed to support U.S. exporters, as a broken promise.

Had the disappearance of manufacturing jobs happened in isolation the scandal would have been greater than in 2008, the bailouts bigger than in 2020. But another trend — the 20 million new service-providing jobs created since 2000 — offset those losses. The result is that, before Covid-19 struck, total employment had never been higher in the United States. The numbers mean that economists can forget places like Link-Belt. The stress and strain people experience as they are forced from the factory floor and into the service sector becomes a secondary matter. Labeled “adjustment costs,” such problems are seen as bumps along the road in a growing economy.

John’s arrival at Link-Belt is a sign of the relentless cost-cutting that will ultimately kill the plant. A prior employer, another Indianapolis factory, had paid him $28 an hour. But then it moved its business to Alabama, where unions are weaker and workers accepted $18 an hour. Another warning bell pings when Link-Belt workers begin to assemble bearings from Chinese-made parts. The workers are reduced to finishing and checking, as the supply chain lengthens and the factory is quietly gutted. “Made in America” had become a slogan, no longer an economic truth. Taking repeated trips to Indianapolis over the course of three years, Stockman captures the sense of impending doom.

At times, her book delves too deeply into the extended families of its central characters — lore relating to grandmothers and cousins slows the pace. This comes at the expense of developments at the factory, of which we get just a few glimpses. Mexican workers arrive from Monterrey to learn how to do the jobs they will be taking over from the Americans once the factory relocates, and at first they are seen as enemies. But these workers are young, have equally tough stories and view the company as a beacon of hope. The locals’ attitudes begin to change, and new relationships emerge. “American Made” would have benefited from a more extended account of this development.

The climax of the book is its penultimate section, “Shutting Down,” about the factory’s final days. As closure looms, Rexnord announces that the Mexican workers will need mentors to teach them how to operate the furnaces, mills and lathes. Their American counterparts refuse, drawing a line in the union’s battle to save the plant. But a grimly predictable economic reality plays out: Wages are far lower at the new Monterrey plant (in Mexico, manufacturing pay starts at less than $5 an hour ), so it makes sense for the bosses to offer American employees cash bonuses until they buckle. The Link-Belt workers see these gestures as the final insult of free trade, as they are coerced into passing on their skills to the people who will make them redundant.

Stories like this show that journalists have a vital role to play in helping us understand the complex economic forces that shape our societies. Rooting out the hidden networks and social capital that support our global economy is painstaking work. Stockman’s reporting reveals a fatal flaw in economics: Adjustment costs are not bumps in the road; they define lives. The task of 21st-century capitalism is to find a model that combines growth and innovation with ways to protect people from the painful shifts these forces so often bring. “American Made” is a reminder that this search continues.

Richard Davies is the director of the Economics Observatory, a research center based in the United Kingdom, and the author of “Extreme Economies.”

AMERICAN MADE What Happens to People When Work Disappears By Farah Stockman 418 pp. Random House. $28.

StarTribune

Review: 'american made: what happens to people when work disappears,' by farah stockman.

In 1997, when the Red River Valley overflowed its banks and flooded most of Grand Forks, N.D., I watched then-President Bill Clinton give an empathetic speech to flood victims at an Air Force base hangar. I met three people in the crowd that day who all lived in the same neighborhood, and over the next year I reported on their efforts to rebuild their homes and lives.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Farah Stockman uses a similar, albeit much more expansive, storytelling device in her new book, "American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears." She follows three union workers who lose their jobs when their factory closes, a gripping real-world drama of their financial and emotional struggles.

And not just any factory. One that gained attention in 2016, when then-President-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "Rexnord of Indianapolis is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!"

Stockman was sent to Indianapolis to write about the Rexnord plant, maker of steel bearings, for the New York Times. She met union vice president John Feltner and, at a steelworker rally, Wally Hall, "a black man in a blue Rexnord uniform who delivered a stirring message of interracial class solidarity." Stockman decided to report on their fate after the plant closure, and realized she also needed a woman in that mostly male plant to complete the narrative.

She persuaded Shannon Mulcahy, a tough single mom raising a granddaughter with a disability, able to succeed in the dangerous "heat treat" department, a woman who had overcome sexual abuse and domestic violence, "yet she didn't seem to think of herself as a victim."

And while the book is centered on John, Wally and Shannon, its themes are far broader than one plant's closing, ranging from the union movement to the manufacturing economy to trade deals and globalization. Stockman notes that NAFTA resulted in a net loss of American jobs, and the "greatest job losses were blue-collar workers," resulting in the anger that led many of those workers to vote for Trump after he promised to save their jobs.

Stockman's insights into race, class and education include acknowledging her own privilege, as the "child of two Ph.D.s" who is "among the tiny number of black people to make it into Harvard."

I won't reveal what happened to John, Wally and Shannon — you need to read this book to follow their journey. Suffice it to say you will find yourself anxiously hoping they land in a better place.

Laura McCallum is the politics and government editor at the Star Tribune. • 612-673-4781

American Made

By: Farah Stockman.

Publisher: Random House, 418 pages, $28.

Laura McCallum is the Star Tribune's Politics and Government Editor. 

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• American Made Blurbs & Reviews
• Farah Stockman

“At last, an elegy for the working class that doesn’t skate on limpid stereotypes about laziness or lack of thrift. Farah Stockman did not just parachute into the lives of displaced steelworkers in Indiana for her debut narrative masterpiece. She stayed, and then stayed some more. American Made is THE STORY about how the rich screwed the working class while the rest of us yawned from our cushy bubbles. With humor, breathtaking honesty, and a historian’s satellite view, Stockman illuminates the fault lines ripping America apart.”

— Beth Macy, author of Factory Man and Dopesick

“Farah Stockman’s respect for hard-working people is why they have given her access into their world, with all of its defeats and conquests. Her thoughtfulness as a writer is why we’re invited into their hearts, where dreams still simmer. Reading American Made is to understand the strength and courage it takes to forge a life in a world too many want to pretend does not exist. An extraordinary tribute to the rest of America.”

—Connie Schultz, author of …and His Lovely Wife and The Daughters of Erietown

“The task of 21st-century capitalism is to find a model that combines growth and innovation with ways to protect people from the painful shifts these forces so often bring. “American Made” is a reminder that this search continues.”

—Richard Davies, The New York Times

“Stockman shows the shattering effects of globalization on the unskilled workers sometimes called “the precariat” for the precariousness of their jobs… this book gives a valuable account of the many things work means to Americans.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Pulitzer winner Stockman debuts with a vivid and empathetic examination of “what jobs mean to people.” She centers the narrative on three former employees of the Rexnord bearing plant in Indianapolis, Ind., which announced in 2016 that it would close its doors and move production to Mexico and Texas. Shannon Mulcahy, who had been one of the first female steelworkers at Rexnord, credits the job with helping her escape an abusive marriage and support her multigenerational family. Since the plant’s closure in 2017, she’s struggled to find work that will provide the same benefits and sense of pride. Wally Hall sees the plant’s closure as the spur he needs to try to launch his own barbecue business, while union leader John Feltner has harsh words for coworkers who agreed to train their Mexican replacements for a $4 per hour bonus. Stockman contextualizes developments in her protagonists’ lives with lucid discussions of globalization, immigration, and the rise of the service economy, and casts events against the backdrop of America’s recent political turmoils, noting that Donald Trump’s harsh criticism of Rexnord’s closure earned him supporters among the plant’s workers. Throughout, Stockman interrogates her own political and cultural assumptions, and draws vibrant profiles of her three main subjects and their colleagues. The result is an intimate and captivating study of the forces dividing America.”

— Publisher’s Weekly , starred review

“AMERICAN MADE by Farah Stockman is a very good book, and in some ways, is exactly what the book jacket says it is: a serious and thoughtful look at what happens to people when they lose their jobs.”

— Charlie Baker , Governor of Massachusetts

“An Indiana steel plant closed in 2017 and hundreds of jobs went to Mexico. NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to Farah Stockman about her book: American Made — What Happens to People when Work Disappears .”

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AMERICAN MADE

Why making things will return us to greatness.

by Dan DiMicco ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 24, 2015

Common-sensical—perhaps too much so for policymakers to stomach—and plainspoken. Free trade absolutists and corporate...

Do you want to build an economy? Well, you can make burgers, or you can make things—and making burgers, warns the former CEO of steel giant Nucor, is a fast track to immiseration.

For the last 30 years, writes DiMicco, the United States has followed a course whereby jobs have fled the country for cheaper labor markets while our own economy has been converted from manufacturing to service. “We went out of our way to dismantle what made this country great,” he writes, “while other countries around the world are building their way to greatness.” Even as DiMicco was propounding arguments on Capitol Hill for the creation of 200,000 high-paying jobs per month over a five-year span, Congress was finding ways to hobble so-called free trade, cutting deals with the corporate giants that allowed them to outsource their operations at no penalty and regulating incoming manufacturers to such an extent that they boarded up shop and returned to their home countries. The infrastructure crisis is fast crippling the nation, and everyone knows it except, it seems, Congress, which is reluctant to spend a dime if it means raising taxes on the wealthy or on corporations. “I wouldn’t even classify infrastructure spending as ‘spending,’ ” writes the author, who’s no one’s idea of a squishy liberal. “It’s a public investment that pays dividends for decades”—and, he adds, every dollar of infrastructure spending adds $1.59 in gross domestic product. A no-brainer? Well, he suggests, a lack of brains is what has gotten us into a mess that can be fixed only by building our way to solvency—a seeming impossibility since Congress once again refused to build a “buy America” plank into the last series of stimulus packages.

Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-137-27979-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014

BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | ECONOMICS

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THE CULTURE MAP

Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business.

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

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‘Making It in America’ calls for a manufacturing revival

Rachel Slade examines the state of American manufacturing through the lens of an idealistic apparel company in Maine

A previous version of this article, using a statistic cited in “Making It in America,” suggested that the Earth’s moon weighs about 80 million metric tons. While estimates of the moon’s weight vary, it is significantly greater than that. This version has been updated.

In his first address to Congress, in 1790, George Washington argued that the United States should promote domestic manufacturing, in order to be “independent of others for essential … supplies.” Today, the country’s two busiest ports, both in California, unload an annual 156.8 million metric tons of cargo. This is just one-third of the total goods entering the country. America now imports a huge quantity and variety of goods — medicine and technology, clothing and cars — just the opposite of what Washington recommended.

The basic argument of the journalist Rachel Slade’s new book, “ Making It in America ,” is that this should change. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was implemented under President Bill Clinton in 1994, more than 60,000 U.S. manufacturers have permanently closed, eliminating millions of jobs. Offshoring of production to Asia in many sectors has only accelerated these trends. Even when workers can find new jobs, those positions tend to be less desirable. From 2001 to 2003, the average manufacturing worker who became reemployed in the service industry experienced a 20 percent drop in income, from $40,154 to $32,153.

American workers are not the only ones affected. Lax labor laws and safety standards in countries around the world make the workers producing goods for major brands vulnerable to wage theft, gender-based violence, and health and safety violations. Considering the effects on the natural world only darkens the picture. Transporting hundreds of millions of tons of cheap goods around the globe creates an enormous carbon footprint, and the disposal of these items drives pollution and environmental collapse. Americans discard more than 1.5 billion pounds of clothing each year, and much of this ends up in sub-Saharan Africa, contaminating water supplies with petroleum-based yarn and chemical dyes. The obvious dangers of relying on foreign countries to produce essential computing components and medical supplies only strengthen the case for a renaissance of U.S. manufacturing.

So how hard would it be to start producing more things in America again, with unionized and well-paid workers, using American-sourced materials? Much of Slade’s book is an answer to this question in narrative form. She tells the story of Ben and Whitney Waxman, an idealistic couple in Maine who launched an apparel company called American Roots almost a decade ago with exactly that goal. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that they find the task incredibly challenging but possible, if barely.

Ben Waxman grew up in Portland, Maine, where his parents ran a business making wool capes. Long an epicenter of textile production in America, Maine experienced the same post-NAFTA decline in manufacturing as the rest of the country, and his parents’ operation closed in 2002. Ben worked for years as a union organizer in his youth, traversing the country and trying, often unsuccessfully, to help preserve the jobs and benefits of Americans who did things like process sugar beets, assemble cars and manufacture refrigerators. Slade narrates this backstory in the first part of the book, so that by the time we see the couple found American Roots in 2014, the depth of their motivation is clear: The decline of American manufacturing is not just a talking point — it’s personal.

Ben’s extensive union contacts provide the fledgling apparel manufacturer with some crucial clients that place large orders for gear their union members can wear. These symbiotic relationships have an irresistible symbolism: America’s unions supporting a unionized workforce manufacturing vests and sweatshirts in America, using cotton and other materials sourced here. But finding drawstrings, zippers, grommets and cotton fleece made in America is no easy task. Slade’s chronicle of the couple’s efforts to secure these supplies doubles as a tour of the decimated state of domestic manufacturing. One zipper maker in Los Angeles says his clients are loyal — until they’re bought out by private equity and forced by new management to find cheaper prices from foreign suppliers.

It’s impossible not to root for the Waxmans as they work extraordinary hours and remain steadfast in their commitment to pay their unionized workers well. In 2022, the average worker at American Roots made $47,000 in annual salary, with generous benefits that included three weeks of paid vacation, holidays and sick days. The prices of the company’s hoodies — they range from $101 to $120 — reflect this decent treatment of workers. It’s normal for businesses that don’t prioritize cost-cutting at the expense of workers to have higher prices.

What’s strange are policies and regulations that perpetuate the disastrous status quo under the mantra of “free markets.” All markets require some regulations and rules to function — the question is always what those rules should be and whom they will benefit. A more reasonable system of tariffs, subsidies and regulation could reward American businesses for manufacturing domestically and treating unionized workers well. Such policies could help lower prices for consumers, but they could also have crucial political repercussions, as Slade persuasively argues, by quelling the rage and disaffection felt by millions of Americans whose jobs were sent overseas at the behest of wealthy corporations and their shareholders.

Slade’s book gives a granular sense of just how hard it is for business owners, particularly those in manufacturing, to do the right thing by their workers in America today. It also conveys just how meaningful and rewarding building a truly ethical business can be, for owners and workers alike. Though the narrative wanders too often into digressions — like a numbered list of the 13 steps in just one phase of the construction of a hoodie — its broader political resonance is potent and timely.

In a possible future America with the capacity to manufacture much more of the hundreds of millions of tons of goods we currently import, there would still be strong ecological reasons to decrease our consumption of so much stuff. But these goals are not necessarily in tension. It’s vital both to consume less and to make more of what we do consume.

Nick Romeo teaches in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His new book, “ The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy ,” will be published in January.

Making It in America

The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way)

By Rachel Slade

Pantheon. 332 pp. $28

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The makers of the based-on-a-true-story black comedy "American Made" fail to satisfactorily answer one pressing question: why is CIA operative and Colombia drug-runner Barry Seal's story being told as a movie and not a book? What's being shown in this film that couldn't also be expressed in prose? 

In telling the true story of American airplane pilot Barry Seal ( Tom Cruise ), writer Gary Spinelli and director Doug Liman ("Edge of  Tomorrow ," " Jumper ") choose to overstimulate viewers rather than challenge them. They emphasize Barry's charm, the exotic nature of his South American trade routes, and the rapid escalation of events that ultimately led to his downfall. Cruise's smile is, in this context, deployed like a weapon in Liman and Spinelli's overwhelming charm offensive. You don't get a lot of psychological insight into Barry's character, or learn why he was so determined to make more money than he could spend, despite conflicting pressures from Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and the American government to either quit or collude.

But you do get a lot of shots of Cruise grinning from behind aviator glasses in extreme close-ups, many of which are lensed with hand-held digital cameras that show you the wilds of Nicaragua and Colombia through an Instagram-cheap green/yellow filter. "American Made" may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

The alarming pace of Barry's narrative, designed to put Cruise’s charisma front and center, keeps viewers disoriented. It's often hard to understand Barry's motives beyond caricature-broad assumptions about his (lack of) character. In 1977, Barry agrees to fly over South American countries and take photos of suspected communist groups using a spy plane provided by shadowy CIA pencil-pusher Schafer ( Domhnall Gleeson ). Barry is impulsive, or so we're meant to think based on an incident where he wakes up a sleeping co-pilot by abruptly sending a commercial airliner into a nosedive. This scene may explain why Barry grins like a lunatic as he explains to his wife Lucy ( Sarah Wright ) that he'll figure out a way to pay out of pocket for his family's health insurance once he opens an independent shipping company called "IAC" (Get it? IAC - CIA?).

Barry's impetuousness does not, however, explain why he flies so low to land when he takes his photographs. Or why he doesn't immediately reach out to Schafer when he's kidnapped and forced by Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and his Cartel associates to deliver hundreds of pounds of cocaine to the United States. Or why Barry thinks so little of his wife and kids that he packs their Louisiana house up one night without explanation, and moves them to a safe-house in Arkansas. There's character-defining insanity, and then there's "this barely makes sense in the moment when it is happening" crazy. Barry often appears to be the latter kind of nutbar.

There are two types of people in "American Made": the kind that work and the kind that get worked over. It's easy to tell the two apart based on how much screen-time Spinelli and Liman devote to each character. Schafer, for example, is defined by the taunts he suffers from a fellow cubicle drone and his own tendency to over-promise. Schafer doesn't do real work—not in the filmmakers' eyes. The same is true of Escobar and his fellow dealers, who are treated as lawless salesmen of an unsavory product. And don't get me started on JB ( Caleb Landry Jones ), Lucy's lazy, Gremlin-driving, under-age-girl-dating, Confederate-flag-waving redneck brother.

But what about Lucy? She keeps Barry's family together, but her feelings are often taken for granted, even when she calls Barry out for abandoning her suddenly in order to meet up with Schafer. Barry responds by throwing bundles of cash at his wife's feet. The argument, and the scene end just like that, like a smug joke whose punchline might as well be,  There's no problem that a ton of cash can't solve .

"American Made" sells a toxic, shallow, anti-American Dream bill of goods for anybody looking to shake their head about exceptionalism without seriously considering what conditions enable that mentality. Spinelli and Liman don't say anything except,  Look at how far a determined charmer can go if he's greedy and determined enough . They respect Barry too much to be thoughtfully critical of him. And they barely disguise their fascination with broad jokes that tease Barry's team of hard-working good ol' boys and put down everyone else.

Sure, it's important to note that Barry ultimately meets a just end, one that's been prescribed to thousands of other would-be movie gangsters. But you can easily shrug off a little finger-wagging at the end of a movie that treats you to two hours of Tom Cruise charming representatives of every imaginable US institution (they don't call in the Girl Scouts, the Golden Girls or the Hulk-busters, but I'm sure they're in a director's cut). If there is a reason, good or bad, that "American Made" is a movie, it's that you can't be seduced by the star of " Top Gun " in a book. 

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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American Made (2017)

Rated R for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity.

115 minutes

Tom Cruise as Barry Seal

Domhnall Gleeson as Monty 'Schafer'

Sarah Wright as Lucy Seal

Jesse Plemons as Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones as JB

Lola Kirke as Judy Downing

Jayma Mays as Dana Sibota

• Gary Spinelli

Cinematographer

• César Charlone
• Andrew Mondshein
• Christophe Beck

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American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work Paperback – February 24, 2009

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• Print length 672 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bantam
• Publication date February 24, 2009
• Dimensions 6.16 x 1.47 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0553381326
• ISBN-13 978-0553381320
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; Reprint edition (February 24, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 672 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553381326
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553381320
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.64 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.16 x 1.47 x 9.25 inches
• #844 in Social Services & Welfare (Books)
• #6,119 in Historical Study (Books)
• #26,520 in United States History (Books)

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Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger review – Scorsese shares his love of British duo

This absorbing celebration of the great film-making partnership is elevated by the enthusiasm and authority of narrator Martin Scorsese

F ew film-makers are as committed to championing the work of other directors as Martin Scorsese . Whether through the World Cinema Project , which he founded in 2007 to preserve and restore neglected masterpieces, or through his support, as an executive producer, of film-makers such as Joanna Hogg and the Safdie brothers, one suspects that he is driven not by ego, but by a genuine love of the medium. Nowhere is this more evident than in this generous, passionate and informative celebration of the work of film-making duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ( The Red Shoes , A Matter of Life and Death , Black Narcissus and more). This fascinating chronological examination of their fruitful collaboration is directed by David Hinton, but it’s Scorsese’s voice, enthusiasm and depth of knowledge that give the film its structure, insight and curiosity. While the film lacks the bravura flourishes that characterised Powell and Pressburger at their peak, it’s an engrossing celebration of two of British cinema’s most distinctive voices, and their creative harmony.

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