The Mule Movie Review

The Mule (2018)

Rent The Mule on Amazon Video
Written by: Nick Schenk, Sam Dolnick (inspired by the New York Times Magazine Article "The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year Old Drug Mule" by)
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, Andy García
Rated: R
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Plot
A 90-year-old horticulturist and Korean War veteran turns drug mule for a Mexican cartel.

Verdict
Eastwood plays his typical out of touch old man character and while an old man working with the cartel is presented as comical, this movie got too silly. I would guess the writer's knowledge of the cartel is based on Law & Order and CHiPS episodes. The longer I watched, the less I was willing to suspend my disbelief. While this started out as entertaining enough, I was bored by the end. The plot wraps everything up in a happy ending which isn't justified at all.
Skip it.

Review
Eastwood plays an old man named Earl that doesn't like people or things in general. He's not only stuck in the past he's a dead beat dad too. There's not much to like about the character, but the movie seems to think a doddering old man is funny or intriguing enough.
The internet is presented as ruining his lively hood but that's more the character failing to adapt to the changing times. His business made it twenty five years after the internet became dominant. That's impressive.

Shunned by family and without a place to stay Earl runs into Rico who's just trying to help a man down while recruiting a drug mule.

The movie is entertaining enough to keep watching, but the point where I started to break was when I didn't know if Earl was in over his head or truly had no idea why thugs with guns would pay him thousands of dollars 'just to drive.' Earl has never appeared to be a stupid man, but this script is by the numbers. Earl needs to be stupid just so we can get Earl's stunned look when he opens the bag he was told not to open. Of course it's only after he knows what's in the bag that he meets a cop and has to think fast to prevent from being arrested for committing the crimes he is committing.

If someone tells you not to look in a bag and will pay out a lot of money to take it somewhere, chances are you are an accessory to something illegal.

The movie also hits the politically incorrect old man trope a bit too hard. I don't accept back in my day as an excuse any more. This movie uses a lot of tropes. While I have plenty of gripes about this movie, including the flat story, it wasn't boring. That is until the last third. Once the wife aspect came into this, and I won't spoil what that is, this movie lost me completely. Earl takes things a bit too far. There is no way he'd get away with some of this stuff. This movie already feels like it's made up by someone that gleaned their facts on cartels from television shows.

This even has the audacity to shoehorn a happy ending where it seems possible Earl may reconcile with his estranged family, but there is no reason the family should do that. A lot of plot points are rather stupid. An old man can't be a mule joke got stale quickly. Nearly everything involving drug running after the first run, and the fact his family forgives him of everything despite what he's done just doesn't work.

Bradley Cooper is also in this, just so Earl has some kind of foil and to show us how baffled the cops are. This isn't a terrible film, but the thin plot completely falls apart by the end. It's not terrible, but it is bad.