The Mule - Review

The Mule

Multi Oscar winner Clint Eastwood stars in the contemporary true story called “The Mule” about a 90-year-old horticulturist named Earl Stone who is financially broke, alone and is ostracized by his immediate family all the while facing foreclosure on his business and passion of growing flowers.

Early in the film we see Earl approached by a friend of his granddaughter and future husband at a family gathering about taking a job for some extra money by driving packages in his old Ford F-150 pick up to Chicago. When Earl asks what he has to do for the money he is told it was just matter of driving, parking his truck in a specific hotel parking lot and leaving the keys in the glove compartment with the promise of his payment inside the truck the next day. Feeling desperate he takes the job. But to his astonishment he discovers the next day after his first run he is paid in excess of $10K for the easy work. But what he doesn’t realize or wanted to know was he is driving drugs in his truck as a courier for the vicious Mexican cartel.

Initially deciding he wants no more of that kind of risk he quickly changes his mind when the amount of money goes up for an even larger shipment for real easy money to get out of his financial hole. But what he doesn’t know is a hot shot hard charging DEA Agent out of NY named Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) has been reassigned to Illinois to break the flow of the drugs coming into the state that Earl is taking to Chicago.

Earl's soon realizes the stakes are now getting higher with each drug run he makes and it starts to weigh heavily on his conscience that he must decide whether to right those wrongs in his personal with his new found money before law enforcement catches him or run risking the wrath of the cartel thugs eventually wanting him killed for his unorthodox and unpredictable way of delivering the drugs on his time table.

REVIEW: “The Mule” has overall a compelling and entertaining story, but it is sure as hell not worth 2 hours of your time. For about 40 percent of the film we are watching essentially a documentary about Clint Eastwood's ability to drive a pick up truck and sing old tunes from the radio. And when he is not driving he is eating sandwiches on the side of the road engaging in meaningless banter and conversations with people he just met. And that is essentially the movie's story until the last 20 minutes when the story starts to have some real value.

Oh, it tries to have two thought provoking subplots. One being a family drama about making amends to people he has hurt in the past. And the other about the DEA Agent slowly and meticulously closing on the name and location of the mystery drug courier. But in both instances neither delivers the level of emotional “oomph” that is was trying to achieve. Mid way through the movie I hardly cared if he reconciled with his ex-wife and daughter at all.

Still, no one but Eastwood could have played “Earl” and he does it to great effect. He is excellent in playing this old “I don’t give a you know what” man. But for me, introspectively speaking his Earl felt way too familiar to the same grumpy angry old man in his previous film of ”Grand Torino”. In both instances Eastwood seems to saying – sending some message more about his own life. Specifically in that he has a problem about the ways things are happening today and has a nostalgic longing when he got to make up the rules and not a bunch of tattooed gun totting Mexican’s in garage with $5 million worth of cocaine to sell.

In the end, “The Mule” while clunky with some scenes and a screenplay that at times is very poorly written (especially a bed side scene) there is still enough of a drama with some appropriate humor for you to see it on a wintry snowy rental night.

3.00 Stars