The Mule (2019) - Movie Review

After the tumultuous trainwreck that was last year’s 15:17 To Paris, I’ll admit that I was somewhat hesitant to see what Clint Eastwood had in store for his next feature. I mean, I’ve gone on record about how I don’t exactly agree with his politics, but I’m still willing to admit that when he has the right material, he can pull through with some genuinely moving cinema. And with him teaming up again with writer Nick Schenk, the scribe for one of Eastwood’s true classics with Gran Torino, and stepping back into the lead role for the first time since that effort, this at least has the potential to be a step back in the right direction. Well, as I’ll get into, this definitely works… although I question some of the aspects it ends up aiming for.

Loosely based on real-life events, The Mule is the story of Earl, a 90-year-old WWII veteran who, out of a need to financially provide for himself, his estranged family and his community, becomes a drug mule for a Mexican drug cartel. While this brings Eastwood into his usual casually-racist element, credit where it’s due in that he plays the role with a certain roguish charm. A nicely self-deprecating sense of humour, and a grim understanding of his own shortcomings, he feels like an even surlier version of Ed Harris from Kodachrome. He didn’t embody the phrase “get off my lawn” this much even when he actually said those words in Gran Torino.

Not that the film seems all too concerned with the criminal side of things. Sure, the police part of the main plot is where the film’s bigger stars come out to play like Bradley Cooper and Michael Peña as two DEA operatives working to shut down the cartel, but the most part, the narrative is after simpler truths. With frequent mentions of needing to appreciate life in the moment (crammed in-between quips about how everyone spends so much time on their phones, in one of a series of highly curmudgeonly threads throughout), the scenes of Earl on the road as a courier show plentiful amounts of Midwestern mindfulness. They’re depicted in basic terms because they’re meant to be engaged with on those terms, whether they involve Earl driving past the Illinois landscape, exchanging pleasantries with members of the cartel, or getting into threesomes.

Hope that last bit was as jarring for you, the reader, as it was for me when I saw it first-hand because they (yes, they, because this happens more than once) make for some quite jarring moments. Seeing Clint Eastwood, an 88-year-old playing an even older character getting into these implied sexcapades, feels like something out of the John Derek playbook of living vicariously through one’s cinematic fiction. It doesn’t help that the film’s core message of putting family before work combined with the aforementioned sexcapades give this a weird connection to Adam Sandler’s Click, which also featured both prominently.

Honestly though, even with how strangely lecherous the film can get in its male gaze, it’s still a pleasant enough feature to sit through. Eastwood’s usual mannerisms here are tempered by how his character knows how badly he’s screwed up in life, treating the narrative around him as an attempt to make up for past sins by committing all new ones. Even with the racial undertones of Earl’s demeanour, the film’s depiction of the DEA and the instances of racial profiling are surprisingly raw, which makes for an honest surprise knowing what I know about Eastwood as a public figure and as a filmmaker. It may not be as engaging as The Old Man & The Gun, but the fact that it manages to work on the same emotional wavelength gives some hope that there’s life in this old soul yet.