Clint Eastwood: drug smuggler? Can't quite see it in real life (he's always been sort of big on law & order), but he's playing a real-life example of one in new film The Mule. Check out the first trailer...
With a script by Nick Schenk, The Mule adapts Sam Dolnick's New York Times article about Leo Sharp. The 90-year-old was an award-winning horticulturist and decorated World War II veteran known for his prized lilies when he was busted for running drugs for Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, and sent to prison. He was transporting $3 million worth of cocaine through Michigan in his beat-up old pickup truck when he was nabbed by the DEA. Sharp was sentenced to just three years after his lawyer argued that his client’s dementia sent him down the wrong path.
Eastwood is playing a version of the man, here called Earl Stone, diving into self-criticism about how he's been as a husband and father, and looking to apologise to those whose lives he has screwed up.
He's bolstered the cast with the likes of Bradley Cooper (now showing some rather impressive directing chops of his own), Michael Peña, Laurence Fishburne, Taissa Farmiga and Dianne Wiest. The Mule sneaks into US cinemas on 14 December ahead of a January release here.
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