The Mule (2018)

An old man named Earl (Clint Eastwood), whose flower business went under, uses his extremely careful and conscientious driving skills to shuttle cocaine from Texas to Chicago for a cartel. On a largely parallel tangent, a DEA agent (Bradley Cooper) tries to bring down the same cartel.

Eastwood plays Earl as being fairly charming. He seems to quickly (although I don't know how long he was doing these drug runs) become buddies with the guys he picks up the drugs from. Joking around with them, promising he's gonna learn how to text before the next run. And it seems to work, even the guy sent by the cartel boss (played by Andy Garcia, though he doesn't get much to do) ends up liking Earl after a while. Earl's also more than a little racist, in that (if you're being generous) oblivious way. The bit where he stops to help a black family change their tire and refers to them as "Negros" made me groan.

I'm also not sure how clueless Earl is meant to be. Did he really not have any clue he was running drugs until he actually looked in the duffel bag they threw in the back of his truck?

But Earl, like most of Eastwood's characters, is bad about expressing his emotions towards his loved ones. His way of showing he cares is by trying to be the best "provider" he can be, even though this meant he was never around. He misses his daughter's wedding, and takes the initial drug run to keep his promise to pay for the cash bar at his granddaughter's wedding. He keeps making runs at least in part because he sees other people or places he cares about the money could help. The notion that his family would have been OK with a little less providing, in exchange for him being around, didn't seem to occur to him until it was too late*.

The movie stays heavily focused on Earl. There are brief cuts to Cooper's investigation. he and his partner leaning on the guy they've convinced to snitch. Generally being jerks to him. They keep using Mexican terms to refer to him, and when he points out he's Filipino, they respond that just means it'll be harder for the cartel to kill his family then. Or we get Cooper arguing to his boss (played by Laurence Fishburne, again not given much to do) for a little more time.

Hard to judge the passage of time, as we don't see changes in seasons or anything, but the point seems to be Cooper is neglecting his loved ones by focusing on his job the way Earl once did. Not sure it really works. Earl running a flower nursery for decades doesn't seem quite the same as working for the DEA. Also, we never actually see Cooper's family, so it's hard to get any sense of how important they're supposed to be him. Might have been simpler to not bother trying to draw that parallel, just focus on the fact Earl's time is running out in more ways than one.

* He's been going to that well for a long time. Since at least when he played the cat burglar guy in Absolute Power.