The Mule

Clint Eastwood directs and plays Earl Stone, a bankrupt daylily grower in his eighties who drives for a cartel while DEA agent Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) hunts him. It is Eastwood’s first lead role since Trouble with the Curve (2012). Nick Schenk, a writer of Gran Torino, adapted Sam Dolnick’s 2014 New York Times Magazine piece “The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year-Old Drug Mule”. Earl makes his first run not quite knowing what he carries, and the film leans on long drives singing along to the radio more than on tension. His remarks to lesbian bikers and a Black family with a flat tire are played for laughs; the film never checks whether he learned anything. Leo Sharp, the real courier, served in World War II, Earl in Korea. Dolnick says the resentful daughter and guilty conscience were Schenk’s invention. Per Slate, Sharp couriered for about a decade, which the film squeezes into a year or so. The diner chat between Bates and Earl is invented; Sharp was caught at a seemingly routine Michigan traffic stop. Canadian Yves Bélanger replaces Eastwood’s usual cinematographer Tom Stern. A good fit if you want a cartel story told through Earl chatting his way past highway police and making peace with his ex-wife. Not for anyone after a faithful account of the Sharp case.