Rent The Mule (2018)
3.5 of 5 from 988 ratings
1h 52min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Eastwood stars as Earl Stone, a man in his 80's who 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. And even as his money problems become a thing of the past, Earl's past mistakes start to weigh heavily on him, and it's uncertain if he'll have time to right those wrongs before law enforcement or the cartel's enforcers catch up to him.
- Actors:
- Clint Eastwood, Patrick L. Reyes, Cesar De León, Gustavo Muñoz, Jackie Prucha, Richard Herd, Adam Drescher, Christi McClintock, Keith Flippen, Alison Eastwood, Kinsley Isla Dillon, Dianne Wiest, Joe Knezevich, Megan Leahy, Taissa Farmiga, Austin Freeman, Victor Rasuk, Robert LaSardo, Saul Huezo, Lee Coc
- Directors:
- Clint Eastwood
- Producers:
- Clint Eastwood, Dan Friedkin, Jessica Meier, Tim Moore, Kristina Rivera, Bradley Thomas
- Writers:
- Sam Dolnick, Nick Schenk
- Studio:
- Warner
- Genres:
- Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 2019, A Brief History of Old Age on Screen: Part 2, A History of Films Inspired by Magazine Articles, CinemaParadiso.co.uk Through Time, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Clint Eastwood, A Brief History of Film...
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 03/06/2019
- Run Time:
- 116 minutes
- Languages:
- Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, German Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Castillian, Danish, Dutch, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French, German Hard of Hearing, Greek, Italian Hard of Hearing, Norwegian, Swedish
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.40:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Making of 'The Mule': Nobody Runs Forever: Join actor/producer/director Clint Eastwood and the all-star cast and crew of 'The Mule' as Eastwood makes his bold return to the big screen
- Toby Keith "Don't Let the Old Man In" Music Video
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 03/06/2019
- Run Time:
- 116 minutes
- Languages:
- Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, Czech Dolby Digital 5.1, English Audio Description Dolby Digital 5.1, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, German Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, Polish Dolby Digital 5.1, Russian Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles:
- Castillian, Chinese, Complex Mandarin, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French, German Hard of Hearing, Greek, Italian Hard of Hearing, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.40:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
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Reviews (16) of The Mule
Eastwood makes this a good watch - The Mule review by CS
Based on the true story of aged drug courier Leo Sharp (a World War II veteran who became a drug courier for the Sinaloa Cartel in his 80s), Clint Eastwood gives an excellent performance in the lead role. The story is simple and effective but while Eastwood is excellent, the back story involving a mostly alienated family is scripted and acted in a way that seems somewhat contrived. Still well worth a watch - and there won't be many more films with Eastwood as a star.
12 out of 13 members found this review helpful.
Old Eastwood still good - The Mule review by EP
Clint Eastwood is no kid these days and it's been 40+ years since he was in all those Westerns I grew up watching but I think he's still good even at his more mature age. (I may be slightly biased as I am a huge fan of pretty much everything he has ever done!).
This film is good not just because of the story which is darkly comic at times, dramatic and overall bittersweet but also because although there is some action it isn't an action film so you can see how aging Eastwood really can act and judging him on his now more subtle acting abilities.
It isn't the classic of an Unforgiven or even the more recent (but still excellent) Gran Torino but there's enough of a storyline here with some big name supporting actors to still make this a really good experience in my opinion.
I laughed a bit (and cried a little), overall I enjoyed it. Oh yeah not only does Eastwood star in it - he directed it too...and he's nearly 90!
Ed
10 out of 11 members found this review helpful.
Worth Watching - The Mule review by KB
I would give this 3.75. Fairly entertaining , mildly amusing but also with a heart. Overall it was a good watch , probably a bit better than I was expecting and i enjoyed it. You can't help rooting for Clint .
5 out of 6 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
The Mule review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso
Clint Eastwood’s filmmaking prowess is still very vibrant at such an old age but his weary bias is starting to show in problematic pieces throughout his work. In his previous meandering picture of The 15:17 to Paris, there’s a pointless scene of our American heroes giving goofy looks to some snotty French stereotypes as well as some mutterings about public education being too PC and foreign people being dirty. The Mule once more confirms that a lot of Eastwood’s conservative craziness is still amplified in his work where it becomes difficult to determine how much of his own role is either supposed to be a character of dated thoughts or if Eastwood really does believe black people should still be called negros. I thought that rambling racist persona was just a character in Gran Torino. Now I’m not so sure the way Eastwood doubles down on the crazy conservative in this picture.
Eastwood plays Earl, a horticulturist war veteran who lives a bitter life. He enjoys selling plants but despises selling at conventions of an automated technology. He has shunned his family who feel like he is never present in their lives. Oh, and he’s wicked racist, never missing an opportunity to call a Mexican a beaner or a lesbian a dyke (oh, but don’t worry, the lesbians said dike first so it’s okay that he says it, right?). He has fallen on hard times. Unwilling to reshape his business, he seeks out other means of making money. He falls into an operation of intitially being told by some gangsters to drive some bags from point A to point B. It seems simple enough. They wanted to secretly stash some stuff in his car’s compartments but, whatever, the money is good.
But then, as though this were a bad King of the Hill episode, Earl discovers that the bags he are transporting contain drugs! How could this be!? And he discovers this just as a cop pulls him over to ask what is in his trunk!? What a tense situation to be in. Now Earl must try to keep the drug shipments going while trying to find a way out. Yet he never feels as though he is in too deep or questioning too much of the errors he has made. Even when dealing with Mexican cartels that could gun him down, he still diverts off course and makes more racist jokes. He seems to want to do the right thing but always with an awkward and unaccounted for narrow view on the world.
Watching this kind of film is awkward with how Eastwood reacts to everyone and how everyone just kinda accepts it. Eastwood makes several rants about how smartphones have damaged the world he once knew but rather than call him out, everyone just sort of smiles and shakes their head, possibly muttering “okay, boomer” under their breath. He makes a racial slur every now and then others will either ignore it or gently try to explain you don’t use that language anymore. I’m sorry but I find it very hard to believe this old-timer could stroll into a Mexican cartel to call them all beaners and then make detours during his drop with little more than a stern talking to. Everyone in this picture respects their elders WAY too much. Oh, and he’s a Veteran so, you know, support the vets. Oh, and support the police, as Eastwood states several times.
The Mule is just downright weird. It’s as though Eastwood got his hands on a Breaking Bad style script and coated in a thick paint of conservatism to make the film pleasing enough for his core demographic of Americans 70-100. Things just work out far too well in this scenario that there’s more melodrama than tension and a lack of genuine concern when we know Eastwood will make it out alive. He’s still got a lot of young people to yell and sling slurs at.