Clint Eastwood is on the run from Bradley Cooper in first trailer for ‘The Mule’

Erik Anderson October 4, 2018

“This is the last one. So help me God, this is the last one.”

In the second old man on the run this awards season, two-time Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby) returns for what is purported to be his final acting performance (more echoes of Robert Redford) in The Mule, which he also directs. It marks his first time on both sides of the camera since he starred in 2009’s Gran Torino.

Eastwood stars as Earl Stone, a man in his 80s 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. He does well—so well, in fact, that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl is assigned a handler. But he isn’t the only one keeping tabs on Earl; the mysterious new drug mule has also hit the radar of a hard-charging DEA agent. 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.

Joining Eastwood is all-star cast of Oscar winners and nominees including two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest (Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway), Academy Award nominees Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, American Sniper), Andy Garcia (The Godfather: Part III) and Laurence Fishburne (What’s Love Got to Do With It). Michael Peña (Ant-Man and the Wasp), Alison Eastwood, Taissa Farmiga, Ignacio Serricchio and Loren Dean, Eugene Cordero.

The screenplay is by Nick Schenk (Gran Torino), inspired by the New York Times Magazine article “The Sinaloa Cartels’ 90-Year-Old Drug Mule” by Sam Dolnick. Eastwood also produced the film under his Malpaso banner, along with Tim Moore, Kristina Rivera and Jessica Meier, and Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas. The film’s executive producers are Dave Bernad, Ruben Fleischer, Todd Hoffman and Aaron Gilbert. Jillian Apfelbaum and David M. Bernstein co-produced.

A Warner Bros. Pictures Presentation, in Association with Imperative Entertainment, in Association with BRON Creative, a Malpaso Production, The Mule will be released in theaters December 14, 2018, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.