Eastwood stuck in neutral
Mules are stubborn. Producer, director and star Clint Eastwood no doubt relished the double meaning in the title of his latest film, “The Mule.” The heavily fictionalized drug courier Eastwood plays here wants no part of today’s world of snowflakes and sensitivities and multiracial realities. Nor does Eastwood’s character want anything to do with post-1975 technology; he complains constantly about cellphones, when he’s not calling out Mexicans as “beaners,” or African-Americans as “you Negro folks.” It worked for “Gran Torino.” Who knows, maybe it’ll get by here.
It brings me no joy to relay this: From an irresistible “tell me more!” of a true story, Eastwood and his “Gran Torino” screenwriter Nick Schenk have made a movie that feels dodgy and false at every turn.
“The Mule” is a step up from Eastwood’s earlier 2018 release, “The 15:17 to Paris,” and there’s some satisfaction in watching Eastwood, now 88, trade fours with his co-stars, including his “American Sniper” star Bradley Cooper, Dianne Wiest and Andy Garcia.
The inspiration for “The Mule” came from Sam Dolnick’s 2014 New York Times Magazine feature on Leo Sharp. Sharp was a World War II Bronze Star veteran, a horticulturist and day lily “hybridizer” of some renown. When his business stumbled with the rise of online commerce, he tried running drugs for the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo. Sharp did well: He ran untold millions of dollars of cocaine into Detroit and other cities, making up to $100,000 a drop. Years went by; no arrests, no suspicion. He was arrested in 2011, served one year of a threeyear sentence and died a free man, at 92, in northwest Indiana.
“The Mule” retells it as if terrified of giving the main character a strong point of view, or viewing him through a stimulating clash of perspectives. The movie’s version of Sharp is Earl Stone, a babe in the woods, naive in the comically implausible extreme. The movie ticks off one drug run after another, from Texas to Chicago. The road trips are excuses to have Eastwood sing along with Dino to “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” or with Roger Miller and “Dang Me.” “The Mule” doesn’t want the audience thinking too much, if at all, about what’s in the back of the pickup. He’s just a lovable coot trying to cash in, and Eastwood is essentially trading “American Sniper” for “American Schlepper.”