The Mule (2018)

Film: The Mule (2018)
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Pena, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia
Director: Clint Eastwood
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I'll be writing an article about the reason why I saw this movie later this week, but today I figured since I'm on a 2018-movie tear that I should get to the what of seeing The Mule.  Regardless of your opinions of him as a director, actor, and person (mine are conflicted), it's certainly impressive that Clint Eastwood's career continues to chug along at the same clip that it does.  The actor, who has retired from acting more times than I can count, is back again as his own leading man in this film, also serving as director & producer, despite the fact that he is nearly 90-years-old.  He's older than almost every other aging filmmaker you can think of (Spielberg, Lucas, Scott, Coppola, Scorsese), oftentimes by more than a decade and they're rarely taking the lead in their films.  And he's continually a box office presence-The Mule crossed the $100 million mark domestically.  So whatever your thoughts on Eastwood, it's remarkable that The Mule exists at all.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based in some respects on the true story of Leo Sharp (Eastwood's character is renamed Earl Stone here for some reason), the world's oldest drug mule who was featured in a New York Times article a few years back.  The film follows Earl, who has largely abandoned his family, including his ex-wife Mary (Wiest) and his daughter Iris (played by Eastwood's real-life daughter Alison) in pursuit of a career as a botanist (something that is kind of bizarre but serves mostly as a way for the aging people in the audience to grumble alongside Eastwood about the internet).  Earl chances upon becoming a drug mule when a random wedding guest at his granddaughter's groom's dinner invites him to become one (because who doesn't have at least one person connected to organized crime at all of their parties?), and starts becoming a successful drug mule since, as a nearly 90-year-old white man, who is going to suspect he's running cocaine?

There's a lot of leaps in logic here, though Eastwood does have the crutch that this is based on a true story.  Somehow Eastwood is a celebrity botanist at one point whose entire career is ruined by the internet, and while he is hip enough to regularly have threesomes (there are two in the movie) with women considerably younger than his daughter, but doesn't know how to text.  The movie has an entire subplot involving the DEA (headed by Bradley Cooper, clearly too big of a star to be taking such a stock, second-lead role, so you get the sense that he's doing this as a favor to Eastwood) chasing after Earl that feels mostly there to fill out a relatively thin story.

The movie functions largely as a fantasy piece, a way to support aging theater patrons about their life choices and habits.  Eastwood, who is vaguely racist but mostly racist to the "bad guys" than the good guys (at least in a way that people who don't read Mother Jones will be able to pick up on), spouts complaints about modern life, modern work ethic, and about how people don't appreciate things he likes (like VFW dances) without the sense of irony that he was a terrible father, and wasn't able to adapt to modern savings & business practices enough to make his business a success.  I was in an audience in a small Midwestern town, and the chuckles & nods I saw during these scenes showed why Eastwood is still a potent box office force even if most critics have moved on from him being the awards magnet behind Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.  The movie thankfully avoids a lot of the political commentary that made Sully impossible to watch, but there's also not enough conflict or action to make this all that interesting.  The Eastwood of thirty years ago would have surely gotten into a fist fight or two, perhaps even a chase in his truck, but at ninety the most we can expect is a slight roughing up done off-camera.

As a result, the most important scenes in the film should be Eastwood rediscovering his love of his family, with him finally admitting that he should have given them the attention his flowers deserved. Here we're reminded of why Eastwood has been a movie star for decades.  There's a beautifully-acted scene where he's essentially confessing to his ex-wife how he should have been a better father that works well, his weathered face still expressive.  Wiest, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have a clue how to handle Mary, going through the motions but occasionally having line readings that are just bad-it's not often you'd put Eastwood & Wiest in the same room and come away thinking the former is the better actor (perhaps the better movie star, but not the finer thespian), but that is the curse of The Mule.  Your patience and enjoyment of the film is entirely predicated on your tolerance for Eastwood, center stage even in a star-studded cast, refusing to go quietly into that cinematic night.