Perhaps the only thing more famous about Tom Cruise than his exceptional acting is his love of playing with danger, which he does in nearly every single one of his movies. And of course, that is what makes all those action films unique and worth watching. However, this one time, while shooting his $135 million superhit, American Made, something went crucially wrong, and while it didn’t cost the Mission: Impossible star anything, it did cost some of his crew their lives.
What’s worse and more disheartening is the fact that the 2017 crime/action movie’s director refused to take responsibility for the mishap that occurred on sets, even after the deceased families filed a lawsuit against the producers of the film.
Tom Cruise’s American Made Shoot Accident Led To The Death Of Two Pilots
While worldwide audiences loved the action-packed Tom Cruise starrer American Made, the crew for the movie didn’t exactly have a happy-go-lucky experience on set. This comes after the Piper Smith Aerostar 600, a small twin-engine plane used for the shoot crashed in the Columbian Andes due to bad weather in September 2015, taking down three hired Hollywood pilots with it as well.
Two of them, Alan Purwin (51) and Carlos Berl (58), died on the spot, while the third pilot, Jimmy Lee Garland (55) survived, but only at the cost of losing feeling in the lower half of his body. The deceased pilots’ family members had filed a lawsuit against the producers of the film – Imagine Entertainment, Vendian Entertainment, and Cross Creek Pictures – for the same.
“Lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety that were the Defendants’ responsibility resulted in an unqualified and unprepared pilot being pressed into service for a dangerous flight in a vintage aircraft across an unfamiliar mountain pass in bad weather,” their complaint documents state.
Although neither Tom Cruise nor filmmaker Doug Liman were named as the defendants in the lawsuit, the families of the deceased also blame the pair for the accident, claiming they wanted American Made to be a ‘high-risk, action-packed motion picture’. However, the director has simply refused to take responsibility for it.
Doug Liman Refused To Take Responsibility For The Mishap On The Sets Of American Made
Appearing in an interview days before the release of the $135 million blockbuster, director Doug Liman was asked if he had a comment for the families of the deceased pilots. To this, he refused to take the blame, saying,
“No [comment]. Just that I’m a pilot and Tom Cruise is a pilot. I don’t know anything specific about the accident, because it didn’t happen during the filming. They were just moving one of the airplanes. I was just going to say that it’s just a reminder — something all pilots know — which is that flying is really dangerous.”
However, producers of American Made had settled all litigation regarding the lawsuits filed with a notice of settlement back in 2019, though the terms and details of the settlement were not disclosed.
Source: Vulture
