The Mule

Octogenarian director/producer/movie star/legend Clint Eastwood shows little sign of slowing down as he approaches his seventh decade in the motion picture business. The Mule is the second film he’s directed in this, his 88th year, and the second film he’s starred in since officially “retiring from acting” after a memorable turn in the unexpected hit Gran Torino (2008). Stories the match Eastwood’s taste, and roles that fit his cantankerous, bigoted-but-redeemable, grizzled old white guy persona are still plentiful in Hollywood. And while Eastwood’s spare, no-fuss directorial approach was a bad fit for his earlier 2018 offering, The 15:17 to Paris, The Mule suits both his on-screen and off-screen qualities all too well.

Based on a New York Times article by Sam Dolnick, The Mule is inspired by the true story of Leo Sharp, a WWII veteran and great-grandfather who, in his 80s, became a courier for a Mexican drug cartel.  Eastwood’s fictional incarnation of Sharp is Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturist and veteran of the Korean War. Earl is a man out of his time—no longer able to earn a living at the work he devoted his life to and estranged from the family he neglected for all those same years. In need of cash after “the damn internet” ruins his daylily business, he agrees to take on part time work as a drug courier, transporting cocaine across the state in his beat-up pickup truck. As an old white American male with no criminal record, not even a single traffic ticket, Earl finds he’s exceptionally effective at this job, and this dubious criminal endeavor may even enable some kind of redemption for him. Unless, of course, he gets bumped off by the warring factions within the cartel or caught by the DEA agents (Bradley Cooper and Michael Peña) hot on his trail.

The Mule is pure Eastwood in that it’s both a shaggy but suspenseful pulpy crime thriller and a wistful, mildly introspective meditation on a time, a place, and a type of man no longer relevant in contemporary America. That it suffers from an undercooked screenplay and squanders many first-rate actors in throwaway roles is, unfortunately, also 100% Clint. Screenwriter Nick Schenk—the novice who Eastwood made an A-list writer when he optioned Schenk’s script for Gran Torino and insisted that not a word of it be changed—grafts a fictional yarn of family neglect and spiritual redemption onto the bones of the true-life story. 

These emotional beats are tailor-made for Eastwood the filmmaker’s signature themes, as well as the kind of minimalist, eye-squinting-and-mouth-opening acting style that Eastwood the movie star perfected decades ago. The character-driven narrative also keeps the film from heading in expected directions, but it riddles the basic plot with logic problems that require us to suspend our disbelief beyond acceptable levels. Like far too many Eastwood pictures, The Mule feels like a first draft script that went into production without anyone taking the time to make sure all the scenes work. Unlike many of this director’s work, grade-C day-players do not populate the secondary parts. Dianne Wiest works hard to make something of the thankless role of Earl's forgiving ex-wife. Laurence Fishburne pops up frequently in the perfunctory part of the DEA agent in charge of Cooper and Peña (who themselves aren’t exactly three-dimensional entities). Clifton Collins Jr. barely registers as a lieutenant in the cartel headed by Andy García (who makes the most of his substantial cameo).  But while the A-list supporting cast manages to smooth-over some of the wobbly dialogue, their wasted presence only reinforces how thinly drawn all of this film’s characters (except Earl) are.

Still, for every frustrating beat, we get three of four solid scenes. The Mule makes a number of apt observations on the racial biases of contemporary society, law enforcement, and the aging members of “the greatest generation.” Eastwood and Schenk are cagey about where they come down on the picture’s (and characters’) attitudes, but that makes the movie all the more compelling and unsettling. Earl is not as rich a character as Walt Kowalski, the bitter, racist Korean War vet estranged from his family that Eastwood played in Gran Torino, nor as much fun to watch as Gus Lobel, the lovable aging baseball scout he played in his other on-camera outing of the past decade, Robert Lorenz’s Trouble with the Curve (2012), but Earl still captivates.  It’s clear that, in his day, he was a popular charmer—a ladies man and the kind of guy liked by everyone who knew him casually. He took for granted all the privileges and advantages afforded to him by the society he was born into. But now that society has vanished along with his youth and the only reason he has any value at all is that he’s become somewhat invisible to the world at large. We get to sit with Earl as he contemplates all of this. And since Earl is Eastwood, there are extra-textural levels at play that entice and captivate. When we’re alone with Earl, The Mule delivers.

Twitter Capsule:
Fact-based yarn about a lovable nonagenarian drug courier in need of redemption suits Eastwood's on-screen and off-screen qualities all too well. Shaggy but suspenseful, wistful and mildly introspective, it delivers some of the goods.