Movie "Mule" Monday!

Welcome to Movie Review Monday! Not a lot seen lately, but I did get a chance to see "The Mule" so let's see what it was like!!!



"The Mule" (director: Clint Eastwood)

 

So, I caved and saw this with my boyfriend, because he has seen a lot of movies I wanted to lately (plus I have been bugging him about moving in), and based on the preview, I was a bit scared to check it out. The previews made it seem like it was very much your typical druggie movie. And yet, it was SOO far from that that I left feeling...confused.

For those of you who need a bit of background, Clint Eastwood (who both directed and starred in this movie) took a very true story and turned it into this movie. This movie was inspired by Leo Sharp, who REALLY WAS a mule for the Cartel! And the dude was 90-years-old! Eastwood plays Earl Stone, a seriously "set-in-his-ways" old man from the Korean War (thank you for your service), who has NO filter! Seriously, some of the things said were truly cringe worthy. No, seriously, even I was feeling uncomfortable! It's like when you have that really old relative who doesn't know right from wrong. Now granted, within all that cringe worthy dialogue, there was some good banter, so it wasn't completely terrible.

Eastwood's character basically is trying to make up for his ways on putting his work first before his family, and there were a few times I felt I could relate--and if you had any of that happen, you definitely felt it too. Meanwhile, Bradley Cooper's character is doing his best to try and do right by his family, in a way that sounds weirdly familiar to Eastwood's situation...and he ends up giving Cooper a warning to not follow in his shoes. But, he also does the same thing with Ignacio Serricchio, who plays Julio, Eastwood's initial handler. In fact, Serricchio and Eastwood start getting close before things go haywire.

In the end, my biggest complaint was twofold: that everything felt like it was building up towards something, and it didn't; and that Eastwood's character tried to start a relationship with Serricchio's character then tried to carry it over to Cooper's when Serricchio gets sucked back into the cartel. Is this a worthy movie to see? Sure, but wait to rent it.