Clint plays cartel curmudgeon

There’s nothing Clint Eastwood doesn’t know about making movies, and he’s at his near best with this entertaining adaptation.

Clint Eastwood in The Mule.

Most of the Hollywood superstars who rose to fame in the 1960s are either dead or, like Sean ­Connery, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson, retired. Robert Redford says The Old Man & the Gun will be his last film. But Clint Eastwood — who acted in his first movie in 1955 — is still going strong, not only playing the leading role in The Mule but directing as well.

It’s Eastwood’s 37th feature as director and as far as I know he is, at 88, the oldest director in the history of American cinema (Portugal’s ­Manoel de Oliveira directed his last film at the age of 104).

There’s nothing Eastwood doesn’t know about making movies, and he’s at his near best with this entertaining adaptation of a New York Times Magazine article, “The Sinaloa Cartel’s 90-year-old Drug Mule”, by Sam Dolnick.

The name of the real-life nonagenarian has been changed from Leo Sharp to Earl Stone for the film, and that’s probably because Nick Schenk’s screenplay has taken some liberties with the character.

Eastwood’s Earl is a horticulturist, first seen in 2005 tending his flowers and forgetting about the wedding of his daughter, Iris (played by Eastwood’s daughter, Alison Eastwood), ­because he’s being feted at a convention of ­florists.

Twelve years later the now 90-year-old is ­beginning to pay for the mistakes he made in his life. The sale of flowers on the internet has ­destroyed his business, the bank has foreclosed on his house, and he’s barred from a party to celebrate the engagement of his granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga).

He’s like so many businessmen who placed their careers ahead of their families and later lived to regret it, and there seems a personal ­element to Eastwood’s portrayal of the role.

Quite by chance he meets a Mexican-American who is impressed by his age and spotless driving record. How would he like to carry out a delivery for some people?

Earl is, in some ways, a naive old duffer who hasn’t even mastered how to send a text message. He still calls African Americans “negroes”, not meaning it to be offensive but because he’s always called them that; at the same time he’s only too happy to stop and help a black family whose car has a flat tyre. He’s also relaxed with the Mexicans, who send him off on regular ­assignments, joking with them and seemingly oblivious — at first — to the obvious fact that he’s transporting drugs on their behalf.

His work for the cartel proves very lucrative. He’s able to buy back his house, acquire a new ute, pay for Ginny’s wedding, help out a friend.

But unknown to Earl the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Chicago office, headed by a never-named special agent (Laurence Fishburne), is on the track of the cartel and agent Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) has succeeded in getting one of the gang to turn informer.

Eastwood has always been an effective director of suspense, and in the second half of the film the screws are tightened as the cops close in while Earl is faced with a family drama involving his ex-wife (the excellent Dianne Wiest).

Yet the tensest moment in the film involves a wholly subsidiary character — an innocent ­Latino driver stopped on the highway by heavily armed police while his vehicle is searched. Visibly terrified, the man mutters that “statistically speaking, this is the most dangerous five minutes of my life”.

You feel for him, and though it’s almost a throwaway incident, that man’s frightened face stays with you long after the film is over. It’s touches such as this that elevate The Mule above the average American crime movie. ­

Interestingly, Eastwood — criticised for the level of violence in the Dirty Harry films — plays down the violence this time. Plenty is ­implied, but almost nothing is depicted on screen, and doesn’t need to be.

The only flaw in the film is that we really don’t get to know Earl well enough to understand why he so readily takes on the role of a mule. The implication is that everything he hates about modernity — especially the banks and internet — has brought him to the point where he despises the authorities and so sees no point in not taking the large sums of money he’s offered for seemingly minimal risks. He’s even flown down to Mexico to meet cartel boss Tata (Andy Garcia), who invites him to a pool party where he gets to meet available young women.

But surely even someone as laid-back and seemingly uncomplicated as Earl would have been able to see the consequences of his actions.

In the scheme of things, this is a relatively minor quibble alongside Eastwood’s achievements here. He looks, understandably, older than when we last saw him on screen in Trouble with the Curve (2012); his body is showing signs of ageing, he walks with a bit of a stoop, and his voice falters at times — but he makes a joke of this (“You’d do a great Jimmy Stewart,” a ­policeman tells him).

Age hasn’t affected his skills, though, either as an actor or as a very ­accomplished director.

Scene from the Australian film Storm Boy. A Sony Pictures release.

Although Henri Safran’s film version of the 1964 Colin Thiele book Storm Boy (1976) was a major box-office success at the time and won the Australian Film Institute award for best film, it seems to have been largely overlooked when the great Australian film revival of the 1970s is discussed.

It’s true that, though charmingly handled and well performed, the film isn’t on the same level as some of the more celebrated local productions of the time. Since then the book has been adapted for the stage, and now there’s a brand new cinema version directed by Shawn Seet.

The basic storyline in Storm Boy remains the same. Mike (Finn Little), a resourceful boy, lives with his reclusive father, Hideaway Tom (Jai Courtney), in a hut on 90 Mile Beach in the Coorong. When a female pelican is shot by a pair of singularly unpleasant duck hunters, Mike “adopts” the dead bird’s chicks and christens them Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Per­cival. He also befriends Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson), an Aborigine separated from his mob, who names Mike Storm Boy. When Mike decides to encourage the now grown pelicans to leave, Mr Percival stays behind.

This basic narrative has been augmented in the new film with a major role for Geoffrey Rush, who plays Mike many years later as an old man looking back on his youth.

In the present, Mike returns from Europe to discover that his family’s mining company, now operated by his son Malcolm (Erik Thomson), is about to begin work in a pristine part of Western Australia despite vigorous opposition from ­environmentalists. Mike’s granddaughter Madeline (Morgana Davies) is one of her ­father’s fiercest critics, and appeals to her grandfather to side with her and vote against the mining when the company’s board meets.

This addition of an environmental message compares interestingly with the more muted concerns of the 1976 version of the story, and adds a very different and heightened level of drama to the basic boy-and-bird scenario.

Rush gives a commanding performance as the older Storm Boy, and there’s an appealing contribution from Davies as his passionate granddaughter. The main game, of course, ­consists of the scenes with young Mike and the pelicans, especially the seriously cute Mr Percival, and these sections of the film are impressively staged.

The Mule (M) 4 stars

Wide national release from Thursday

Storm Boy (PG) 3.5 stars

National release