Clint Eastwood Plays an Octogenarian Drug Mule in The Mule Trailer
Image via Warner Bros./YouTube
Clint Eastwood makes an unlikely acting comeback in the trailer for The Mule, his first film as both director and star since 2008’s Gran Torino, and the prolific director’s second film this year after 15:17 to Paris.
Based on the true story of Leo Sharp, the film stars Eastwood as Earl Stone, a World War II veteran who in his ‘80s became a drug mule for a Mexican cartel. Eastwood’s American Sniper star Bradley Cooper, soon to make his own directorial debut with A Star Is Born, hunts him down as DEA agent Colin Bates in The Mule, with Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest and Andy Garcia also rounding out the cast.
It’s hard to know what to make of The Mule, which could go all sorts of directions in terms of Eastwood’s wildly varying recent career. The veteran director has put out thoughtful meditations on the consequences of American patriotism with films like Letters from Iwo Jima, but also less successful explorations of race and white masculinity with such films as American Sniper and Gran Torino, his two most successful titles to date.