"The Mule"

 ☆☆☆ 

With The Mule, Clint Eastwood reminds us why he's both a smooth and accomplished filmmaker and the guy who debated a chair. His latest movie is a laid-back combination of thriller, domestic drama and light comedy.

The latter quality is both the most charming and confounding part of The Mule, as Eastwood plays a gruff 90-year-old racist (shades of Gran Torino) who starts running drugs for a Mexican cartel. Much of The Mule plays like an orgiastic Trumpian fantasy of mean, bad Mexicans ruining our country. But The Mule completely skirts the issue that an angry and embittered white guy is actually doing the dirty work. Every Mexican (save one) is a scary, tattooed gangster, a view that the movie plays for laughs.

Tonally, The Mule wanders the map more than Eastwood's Earl Stone, who stumbles into a job running ever-bigger loads of cocaine from El Paso to Chicago. It's borderline silly as it depicts Stone's passion for gardening day lilies, earnest when it focuses on his estranged family, and completely lacking a point of view about what Earl is doing. The one thing it never is, though, is tense -- even when a dedicated FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper closes in on him. It's a thriller without thrills, but there are a lot of shots of Clint squinting, singing and even cavorting topless with nubile young women.

The Mule is not at all an unenjoyable experience, just very, very odd.




Viewed Jan. 5, 2019 -- AMC Burbank

1335