Film Review - The Mule (2019)

The Mule is directed by and stars Clint Eastwood as Earl Stone a man who works with Daisy’s for a living even if he ignores his family (Tessa Farmiga, Dianne Weist and Alison Eastwood) but when his flower shop goes bust he has to find a new job and he is offered a simple driving job from A to B though little does he know that he’s become a Drug Mule but someone like him with a clean criminal record and his old age makes him ideal for that work.

There is something very reassuring about watching Clint Eastwood on screen in a movie and this is his first on screen role since Trouble with the Curve in 2012 and while I was watching him in this movie I couldn’t help but smile a little because there was a part of me that thought that no matter what happens it feels like everything will be okay even though he is 89 now and at times looked very frail and skinny and I thought to myself “No no don’t move” as if he was a grandparent or something and when I began to think about it some more I thought of Donald Sutherland in the Leisure Seeker last year.

And it had me thinking that I imagined those men in the roles that made me fall in love with them be it Dirty Harry or Firefox or the Hunger Games series or as the head of the Jebediah Springfield museum respectively and watching them be frail or sick in a film and I know their just playing the part I couldn’t help but react a little as if it was watching a family member be similar.

As for the film itself it is okay, it doesn’t reach the heights that both American Sniper or Sully reached which felt like vintage Eastwood films up there with his best work this is more of his middle of the road fare where he did a few takes, shot it relatively quickly and put it out for Warner Brothers so he could move on to a more personal project.

The rest of the cast are pretty good, Bradley Cooper has a small role as a DEA agent, Lawrence Fishburne plays his boss, Michael Pena is his sidekick and their all pretty good, also good is Ms Weist as Earl’s long suffering wife and Andy Garcia as the head of the Cartel Earl goes to work for.

And so that was my review of the Mule and it’s a serviceable effort from Clint but it isn’t one of his best, 2 out of 5.