Cruise is on top form in a based-on-fact thriller that overcomes its familiar trappings with audacious details and flat-out pacing.

Cruise is as compelling as ever with charm to spare, and this is a ceaselessly entertaining, sometimes tense romp. Although it doesn’t dig much below the surface.

The film has just about enough going on around its anti-hero to sustain the interest and land its punchline, and there are signs Liman (a Cruise veteran since “Edge of Tomorrow”) is solving the enduring problem of making a Cruise film that’s not wholly about its leading man.

A sweat-slicked, exhausting but glibly entertaining escapade on its own terms, American Made is more interesting as a showcase for the dateless elasticity of Cruise’s star power. It feels, for better or worse, like a film he could have made at almost any point in the last 30 years.

It’s a breezy trip for the star, making ample use of his usual charisma, urgency, grin and gift of the gab, though the late ’70s/early ’80s-set film doesn’t completely hit the mark.