The Mule (2018)

THE MULE  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Clint Eastwood
    Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Taissa Farmiga,
    Dianne Wiest, Laurence Fishburne, Alison Eastwood,
    Michael Peña, Andy Garcia, Clifton Collins Jr.
It's not much of a stretch for Clint Eastwood to play an old man anymore. He's become one. Eastwood was 88 when "The Mule" came out late in 2018, and the character he plays is even older, so the casting makes sense. The movie's based on a New Yorker article titled "The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule", and it stars Clint as Earl Stone, a horticulturist who specializes in flowers. When his business fails due to competition from the Internet, Earl puts his lifelong safe-driving record to use, moving cocaine from El Paso to Chicago in his pickup truck, because who would suspect a guy like that would be smuggling cocaine? It's not one of Clint's great movies, but it's a passable diversion, playing on a theme he's explored many times before: the primal importance of families, both biological and surrogate. At one point, Earl asks a young associate why he doesn't just split and find another line of work. The man replies that the cartel is his family. Earl himself is at odds with his wife and daughter, the family he's basically abandoned to pursue an award-winning career as a grower. (Parallels to Eastwood's own approach to family life may or may not be coincidental.) Other filmmakers have made movies at Clint's age or older, but not many, and it's the same with actors in starring roles. As far as I know, doing both simultaneously at that stage in life is unprecedented. At a point where most folks are lucky to be breathing, Eastwood's not just still in the game. He's having a real good time.