The Mule **** (2018, Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Manny Montana, Andy Garcia, Dianne Wiest, Alison Eastwood) – Movie Review

Clint Eastwood stars in The Mule (2018) as Earl Stone, a real-life 90-year-old horticulturist and Korean War veteran who becomes a drug mule, making runs in his truck transporting millions of dollars worth of cocaine through Illinois for a Mexican drug cartel. Eastwood also produces and directs.

Bradley Cooper returns to Eastwood’s side after the 2014 American Sniper as DEA Agent Colin Bates, the drugs cop on the case. Cooper is fine, and will help box office, but, in truth, this is not much of a role. None of the roles in The Mule is much of a role, other than Eastwood’s. The film is designed as a late acting showcase for his, and he is great. What happened? All those years when he wasn’t much of an actor, mumbling his lines in growling rasp. And then, he got it, and developed it. And now he’s great.

I’d say Eastwood is better than his film, along with being better than everyone around him. That’s not to say it’s not a good movie. It is. Or that the other acting is not good. It is. It’s just that Eastwood is very, very good, in a detailed, friendly, relaxed portrait of an old man at the end of his life and the end of his tether – he has no money and they want to repossess his home. What’s a 90-year-old horticulturist going to do in these circumstances? Accept a dodgy stranger’s card and make a call to meet the bad guys, a cheery sort of a bunch, but obviously dangerous, that is what. He is the perfect drug mule. Nobody would suspect the old white guy.

Along the way Eastwood gets to meet his handler Axl (Manny Montana), his boss Laton (Andy Garcia) and other assorted bad guys. They are all stock characters out of The Book of Cliche Roles, though entertaining enough. While the film sticks to drug running, it’s on safe ground. When it swaps to Eastwood’s dysfunctional family circumstances it gets all woolly and weak.

The role of Eastwood’s ex-wife Mary completely defeats Dianne Wiest. As she is a brilliant double-Oscar-winning actress, we know the problem here must be the role and the writing. Alison Eastwood has even more trouble with the role as Eastwood’s frosty, angry daughter, who feels abandoned by him, and Taissa Farmiga can’t do anything with the boring one-note role of Clint’s grand-daughter, either.

Three other good actors are thrown away too: Michael Peña as Bates’s fellow DEA Agent, Laurence Fishburne as their boss, the head DEA Special Agent, and Clifton Collins Jr. Three three actors are just there on screen, with little to do, but then the film would be poorer without them.

Yet the film is warm, engrossing and appealing. It is almost willfully old fashioned, running at a sedate, friendly pace rare in modern mainstream cinema, with old-fashioned music and songs on the soundtrack. It is a real old man’s film, and good.

It starts and ends in a good place, surprisingly, and takes place in lots of fascinating places along the road. Americana is everywhere, with all its quirky, weird by-ways – Clint meets Dykes on Bikes, Clint stops to helps a couple who have a flat tyre and calls them Negroes (we prefer ‘Blacks’), Clint finds the perfect fast food, Clint takes a fatherly interest in the drugs agent and his drug running minder – singing along in his car, confronting the problem of how to text, Clint has a lust for life. Your can buy anything except time, so you might as well enjoy your time, the time you have. Clint finds pleasure in unusual places, and somewhere that, if anything, seems to be the message of the movie.

Eastwood is 88, and hasn’t acted since Trouble with the Curve in 2012. His previous film as actor was his hit Gran Torino in 2008, playing Walt Kowalski. The Mule is the second collaboration between Eastwood and writer Nick Schenk following Gran Torino. Eastwood was right to go back to him. I reckon they could squeeze in a third movie and make it a trilogy.

Mixing gentle humour, with warm sentimentality, a bit of sex and a bit of danger, Schenk’s screenplay is not perfect, but is ideal material for Eastwood, inspired by the story of World War Two veteran in his 80s Leo Sharp, who became the world’s oldest and most prolific drug mule for the Sinaloa Cartel. In particular it is inspired by the New York Times Magazine Article The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year Old Drug Mule by Sam Dolnick.

It makes for a quirky and peculiar movie that would be unique, except that it resembles Robert Redford’s The Old Man & the Gun. They would make a good double bill.

It has been an unexpected success at the US box office, taking $100 million. I think history will judge The Mule well too.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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