Movie Review: The Mule

This is the third Clint Eastwood movie that I've seen him in, and of them all this one is in many ways a very atypical role for him.

The Mule, based on a true story, is a crime drama that both stars Eastwood and is directed by him as well.

In the film, Eastwood plays Earl Stone, a 90-year-old horticulturalist and Korean War vet who is facing financial ruin - his business (and also his home) is facing foreclosure, he is estranged from his family due to his love of his work, with only his granddaughter being willing to give him any time.

Desperate for money and for work, Earl is one day approached by a man who offers him a job driving goods for him and his group. Just driving some bags from Texas to a dropoff point in Chicago...

Of course, said bags are full of cocaine, and said "group" is a big Mexican cartel.

Earl is from the start suspicious, but he takes the job, and becomes a "mule" for the cartel, driving their drug shipments for them. He's damned good at it, because almost nobody would ever suspect a kindly old man with a perfect driving history and lack of criminal record, of ever being a drug mule.

Soon enough, Earl's successes start to draw the attention of the DEA, and two agents, Colin Bates (played by Bradley Cooper) and Trevino (Michael Pena) are assigned to investigate who's the mule that's bringing all this coke into the Chicago area.

As the movie goes on, life seems to be working out for Earl. With the large amounts of money he's given for his deliveries, he starts funneling it back into improving his own life: paying back the money due on his house, saving the local VFW Post, and also paying for his granddaughter's education. In fact, for a good chunk of the movie, Earl's circumstances as a drug mule look pretty damn fun, especially in a sequence where he ends up invited to attend a party at the cartel boss' mansion. The sheer consumption on display there is both outrageous and weirdly hilarious...

Though of course, this being the world of crime and drugs, the dangers of the trade soon rear their heads. Soon Earl ends up with a new "handler" and a new "boss," who are a lot less inclined towards accepting any deviations from schedule...

The Mule is a film that has a very sedate and methodical pace to it. That might bother some viewers (some reviewers apparently criticized it because they felt it lacked true dramatic tension or heft) but I felt it worked pretty well; in fact, I think that the simple basic presentation added a lot to Earl's trips, showing how easy it was for him to get into the life as a drug mule despite all the inherent dangers and risks that he was potentially facing.

A big part of what makes this movie work so well is Eastwood's performance as Earl Stone. In many ways, it's a shocking departure from the roles that he's so famous for. Earl Stone isn't a snarling tough guy like Dirty Harry, Walt Kowalski or any of those personas: he's an old man who loves to grow flowers, who loves travelling on the open road, and is honestly a really charming and personable old guy. (Of course, there's a darker side to this nature - it's quite plain that his love of travelling, his work and being Mister Social Butterfly has seriously damaged his family life because he enjoyed the conventions he went to more than anything: the movie opens with the fact that he chose a convention over his own daughter's wedding, which is a big part of why his family is so pissed at him...) But even with that dark pall hanging over his character, it's weirdly easy to connect with and sympathize with Earl, even as he continues to run drugs for the cartel, because Eastwood is able to play him with such charm... and thus when things go wrong and Earl realizes how deeply he's screwed himself over, you do feel sympathy for him and hope that somehow things might work out.

In addition to Eastwood's performance, you have good work from many of the other actors too. Though they don't get as much development or screentime, seeing Bradley Cooper and Michael Pena's agents together is quite a treat; the two actors have a ready charisma and rapport with each other, and work quite well in their scenes, be it pressuring a cartel man to act as their mole or elsewhere. A particular favorite scene of mine is where Earl runs into Agent Bates at a Waffle House one morning while on a delivery. It's a fun and well-acted conversation because Earl pieces together that Bates is a federal agent and is basically after HIM, and so is cautious, and yet their discussion also leads him to some important realizations about his work as well. Very well done all in all.

Hell, even bit characters in this movie deliver quite well too. One part of the fun in this movie is seeing Earl's relationship with the nameless cartel thugs at the auto shop where he begins his deliveries. In particular the moment where they have to teach him how to text XD

All in all, I quite enjoyed The Mule. It's a methodical crime film with a superb lead performance, and I do think that said methodical, even-paced running time gives the story a nice slow-burn nature to it. Wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but to fans of Eastwood it's definitely an intriguing story to watch.