Movie · 2018 · Crime, Drama · 1h 56m · R · English
Curator score: 3.2/10 (172.6K ratings)
Nobody runs forever
Overview
Earl Stone, a man in his eighties, is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. He does so well that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.2/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 70%
Metacritic: 58
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Clint Eastwood
Production
Imperative Entertainment, Bron Studios, Malpaso Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, Andy Garcia, Ignacio Serricchio, Taissa Farmiga, Alison Eastwood, Richard Herd, Lobo Sebastian, Manny Montana, Noel Gugliemi, Gustavo Muñoz, Patrick L. Reyes, Cesar de León, Jackie Prucha, Adam Drescher, Christi McClintock, Keith Flippen
Curator Review
Verdict
A late-period Clint Eastwood drama that plays less like a crime thriller than a rueful character study about aging, regret, and the comforts of the road. It’s uneven in its cartel/DEA mechanics, but the performance, dry humor, and melancholy Americana make it worthwhile if you’re open to a slower, reflective crime film.
Best for
Viewers who like crime stories with a strong human-interest angle
Fans of late-career Eastwood and old-school American filmmaking
People drawn to road movies, regret, and aging protagonists
Audiences who appreciate dry humor inside serious drama
Skip if
You want a tightly plotted, high-tension thriller
You’re looking for a morally clean protagonist
You dislike meandering character studies or sentimental Americana
You prefer modern crime films with sharper procedural detail
Overview
The Mule is a crime movie that keeps drifting away from the crime. What lingers most is Earl Stone himself: a stubborn, lonely old man moving through diners, highways, and family damage with the weary rhythm of someone who has run out of time and only just noticed it. Eastwood treats the role as both joke and elegy, and the film works best when it lets Earl simply exist in motion.
Worth noting
The cartel plot gives the story momentum, but it’s not the real point and sometimes feels like scaffolding around the more interesting material. The DEA pursuit is functional rather than thrilling, and the film’s moral perspective can be blunt. Still, the mix of ruefulness and deadpan comedy gives it an offbeat charm, especially in the scenes that connect Earl to ordinary American life.
Bottom line
As a late-career Eastwood film, it feels personal without being tidy. It’s about loneliness, work, family neglect, and the strange grace of being useful again when you’ve already done a lot of damage. Not his sharpest film, but one of his most affecting recent ones.
Top Letterboxd reviews
davidehrlich (4★) · 1001 likes
At 88 years old, Clint Eastwood might be the hardest-working man in Hollywood. And now, with his second directorial outing of 2018 — and his best film since at least “Letters from Iwo Jima” in 2006, and perhaps 1993’s “A Perfect World” before that — he’s finally explained why.
Inspired by a Sam Dolnick article in the New York Times Magazine called “The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-Year-Old Drug Mule,” “The Mule” is a far cry from the red state fantasy that… more
Carman Tse (4.5★) · 810 likes
Eastwood made a tender film about the failure of the American Dream that doubles as a road trip through America’s beautiful heartland and as an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. it’s also one of the funniest movies of the year. i can’t fucking believe it.
Josh Lewis (4★) · 799 likes
A movie about how Eastwood is really sad that there’s only a finite amount of time on this earth for us to enjoy its comforts, like singing along to "cool water", dancing to polka music and devouring pulled pork (and ice cream) sandwiches. Which, honestly, same. But also a pretty damn regretful movie about how he doesn’t even deserve the amount he’s already had—wasting large chunks of it and leaving wounds in others out of selfishness—especially when some people are getting much less time than him, and are systemically granted far fewer of his comforts and chances to make mistakes, simply for looking different.
fran hoepfner (3.5★) · 649 likes
“you’re welcome, dykes” — Clint Eastwood, to dykes
Matt Erspamer (4★) · 561 likes
🎵tell me something Earl, are you happy in this modern world?🎵
2013 · Drama, Adventure · 1h 55m · R · Curator 8.5/10 (234.6K ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, MGM Plus
Dryly funny and deeply sad, with an older protagonist moving through a stripped-down American landscape.