Mark Reviews Movies: THE MULE (2018)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 13, 2018

When it comes to folks whose ways and attitudes seem out of place in modern times, there are people who feel left behind, and there are those who simply never thought of a world beyond their own limited field of vision. The first category of person is likely to feel angry or scared or some combination of those and other feelings about the way society has evolved, compared to a time when they thought the world was a pretty nice place. It was nice for them, at least, because, if a person hasn't changed with the times, it's likely because they haven't even considered an experience other than their own.

Clint Eastwood's character in The Mule, thankfully, belongs to that second category of person with outdated ways of talking and thinking. The director/star's Earl Stone isn't one for much in this world. He has his flowers, which have made him enough money to get by and support a family for several decades. That is, to be honest, about it for Earl. The love for his flowers is only secondary to his love for being the man who grows such beautiful things. Over those decades, he had become something of a major star within the realm of people who make a life of horticultural concerns.

That was before people stopped caring as much about little ventures like Earl's daylily farm in Peoria, Illinois. Within 12 years of him winning an award for his flowers, his property is foreclosed upon by the local bank, and he has to let go of everything that meant something to him in his life. Even the things that probably should have mattered, namely his family, are gone. They left him when they finally had had enough of being placed third behind his ego and his flowers.

Eastwood opens the film with a shot that quite literally considers the lilies of the field. Earl's life is a lot like that Gospel verse. He has worked, for sure, but he hasn't toiled. A person who does what he or she loves, as the man said, never works a day in his or her life. Earl has coasted through life, with little concern for maintaining his family and only slightly more concern for them after losing them. If he doesn't care much about the people closest to him, why would he have any reason to care about anyone else in this world?

The world catches up to Earl near the beginning of this story, based on the true one of Leo Sharp, a World War II veteran who became a drug mule for a Mexican cartel when he was in his 80s, as profiled in Sam Dolnick's 2014 article from the New York Times Magazine. Nick Schenk's screenplay changes the name, makes the character a veteran of Korea, and seems to invent the entire familial drama. The part about the daylilies is accurate.

The central thrust of this version of the story is how Earl adjusts to the growing realization, not only that the world has changed without him noticing, but also that there is a bigger world beyond himself and his flowers. From the start, we can tell that Earl is a polite Midwestern man, charming to strangers and even more generous toward them than he is toward his family. He misses the wedding of his daughter Iris (Alison Eastwood, in a casting choice that adds a possible layer of confessional to her father's decision to star in and direct the film) to attend a daylily conference. That decision puts the final nail in his relationships with her and his former wife Mary (Dianne Wiest).

Twelve years later, he takes a job running drugs from El Paso to the Midwest in order to help pay for his granddaughter Ginny's (Taissa Farmiga) wedding. Earl's good at the gig. He doesn't have a criminal record, drives cautiously and unpredictably (so that he can appreciate the sights, the cuisine, and the sex workers along the way), and doesn't ask any questions (Earl knows he's carrying illegal cargo, but he doesn't even bother to check one of the bags until his third run—just as a cop with a drug-sniffing dog pulls over to check on him).

He keeps up the work to buy some things for himself (his farm and a new pickup truck) and others (paying off a debt for the local VFW). Meanwhile, DEA agent Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) is investigating the cartel's operation, and the cartel leader (played by Andy Garcia) faces some internal challenges to his power.

Such plot matters, though, are secondary to the film's examination of how Earl interacts with a world that has changed without him realizing it. There's the way he becomes friendly with his handlers in Texas. While on his regular trips from Texas back to the Midwest, there are some short vignettes of encounters with people. He doesn't understand certain things (a group of women on motorcycles) or still talks about certain groups of people in outdated ways (never more uncomfortably than when he helps a black family on the side of the road with a flat tire).

We can look at these scenes at face value, noting certain insulting words, or we can take them within the context of Earl's evolution. He adapts to the changing times without anger or resentment for the fact that world has changed. Earl changes in ways that might not be up to par with the world of which he is now a part. Throughout The Mule, though, he does change, in his realizations that the concerns of others, from strangers to his family, are worth giving a damn about and, ultimately, that he has a price to pay for a lifetime of not giving a damn.

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