The Mule

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Andy Garcia, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, Laurence Fishburne, Taissa Farmiga, Alison Eastwood

Director: Clint Eastwood

Inspired by the New York Times Magazine article "The Sinola Cartel's 90-Year Old Drug Mule" by Sam Dolnick

Before we get started, I just have to say Gran Torino was supposed to be Clint Eastwood’s final role as an actor. It would have been perfect too. It was Clint’s riff on his irascible screen persona, leaning into his advanced age as many of his latter-day films have. But amidst all his gruff and racist persona in that film he accepts his own shortcomings and, without putting too fine a point on it, passes the torch to a younger generation. It was the ideal swan song for the gruff badass of film’s days gone by. The Man with No Name riding off into the sunset… Then a few years later he acted in Trouble with the Curve as what seemed to be a favor to his producer Robert Lorenz. So much for swan songs. Well, Clint Eastwood is back directing himself in his you-guys-no-for-real-this-time last acting role as a gruff, irascible old timer. Marvel at the range. This is the man who made Unforgiven though. So, the question is this: can The Mule do what Gran Torino did just over a decade ago?

Clint Eastwood plays Earl Stone. When we meet Earl in 2005 he is a successful florist. Yep. A florist. Even somewhat dandyish when interacting with his contemporaries. But online orders change the face of the flower game, apparently (which I would think happened earlier than 2005 but whatever). In 2017, he is financially ruined and his ex-wife (Diane Wiest) and his own daughter (singer Alison Eastwood in a role it feels like Laurie Holden turned down) doesn’t even speak to him. His engaged granddaughter (Taissa Farmiga) still has hope for him but Earl has always put flowers before family (really). A casual acquaintance of his granddaughter tells him he can make good money just driving. From the film’s title, you can guess he doesn’t mean Uber. Earl really takes to drug-running and makes fast friends with the various tattooed Latino cartel members who load and unload his pickup truck with cocaine. Meanwhile, in Chicago, DEA Agent Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) has been transferred with the goal of making some big busts. He and his partner (Michael Peña) flip a low level drug dealer (Eugene Cordero, Pillboi from The Good Place) for information on how the drugs get from El Paso to Chicago. Three guesses how these parallel narratives come together.

I think there are certain film-makers like Eastwood who are so prolific that they have a handful of masterpieces, a handful of shit, and a whole lot in between. The Mule falls into that in between. Whether the higher or lower end of that middle is up to your patience. This movie is glacially paced. All of Eastwood’s movies have a laid-back approach to how quickly the story moves but holy shit The Mule could use maybe a half-hour excised. It’s tricky for me to say what exactly should be cut as there are a lot of nice character moments but if I had to start with something I think maybe one of the TWO times Eastwood gets a pair of sex workers for a ménage à trois probably could have been let go. (Though the second contains gratuitous nudity allowing me to revel in the pun “as useless as tits in The Mule”). As the film geared up to what I assumed was its climax, we were only about halfway through its about-2-hour runtime. As much as I like spending time with character actors like Clifton Collins Jr. and Andy Garcia as a seemingly Cuban-accented Mexican, it drags.

Also: what is Eastwood’s obsession with casual racism? The racism of Eastwood’s Gran Torino character helped serve as part of the arc of his character, especially as he befriended younger Hmong characters. Earl’s racist ribbing with various Latinos serves no real purpose. As well as his casual “oh really?” attitude when told by black characters that “Negro” isn’t acceptable language in 2017. Conversely, the film has a scene where a Latino character is pulled over that acknowledges the terror that a person of color faces in situations like this. An oddly in-touch sentiment from the famously conservative Eastwood but the scene is also played for laughs a bit and doesn’t narratively or thematically gel with the rest of the movie. Earl doesn’t have much of an arc at all really. He is pretty much the same at the end as the beginning, barring some minor “man, I was a shitty husband and father” revelations which… yeah, duh, dude. The stakes seem very low, despite the fact that the stakes are quite high in DRUG TRAFFICKING.

I didn’t hate The Mule. I hesitate to even say I disliked it. But a lot is holding it back. Eastwood does have his masterpieces but, in my opinion, the last one was Mystic River and that was 15 years ago. The 15:17 to Paris from earlier this year is one of the worst-reviewed movies of his career (maybe a director who famously shoots only one take shouldn’t work with lead actors who have never acted before), so by that measure The Mule is a step up. It does have what’s always been right with Eastwood’s films but it dragged down by a lot of what’s been wrong with his later films (he practically shakes his fist at cell phones and the internet). I wouldn’t be surprised if he blindsides us with another masterpiece before he rides off into the sunset for good, but in terms of leaving his acting career on a high note... he missed his shot.

C-