It’s tempting to over-analyze The Mule. Is Earl Stone, the octogenarian drug runner at the centre of the film, some sort of metaphor for the film’s director, Clint Eastwood? After all, Eastwood has decided to return to acting after his supposed final screen role in 2012’s Trouble with the Curve. Are we meant to see some sort of connection between Stone’s decision to transport drugs for the Sinaloa cartel and Eastwood’s commitment to churn out movies like clockwork?

I doubt it. If Eastwood has demonstrated one thing over the years, it’s his ability to complete projects ahead of schedule and under budget. Taking the lead role in The Mule was likely prompted by Eastwood’s usual commitment to make a production easier and cheaper, and not some desire to bury some hidden commentary about his career.

Nevertheless, the thought of a symbolic connection is still tantalizing. Stone is spurred into his life of crime by feeling like he hasn’t done enough for his estranged family, and Eastwood’s own life is definitely not known for being one of domestic harmony. Perhaps somewhere down deep, Eastwood feels some kind of bond with Stone’s motivations, even if he wouldn’t cop to it in conversation.

Inspired by a 2014 New York Times Magazine article about a Second World War veteran named Leo Sharp, The Mule introduces us to Stone when he appears to be on a late-life upswing. In his seventies, Stone has become renowned for his flower business, winning awards for the unique types of daylily that he breeds. But we soon learn that Stone’s passion for his career has driven him away from his family, and we watch him miss his daughter’s wedding in favour of a daylily convention.

We then jump to ten years later, and Stone’s life is quite different. Unwilling to move his business online, sales plummet and Stone is forced to shut down his operation; the bank also forecloses on his home. But a chance encounter at his granddaughter’s engagement party connects Stone with a new opportunity: driving mysterious packages from Texas to Illinois. Stone already loves driving, and his natural charisma quickly endears him to the otherwise standoffish men he meets at either end of his journeys. It’s not long before Stone has more money than he knows what to do with, and builds a reputation as the Sinoloa cartel’s most trustworthy and least conspicuous mule.

Eastwood intercuts Stone’s story with that of the lawmen hunting the driver they only know as “El Tata”. Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) is the lead DEA investigator in Chicago, and teams with another agent (Michael Peña) to find out who the mule is and stop him. But it’s here where The Mule feels a little sparse. Other than making a comparison between Bates and Stone and how their careers threaten to take them away from their families, we don’t get to know Bates very well. We also don’t see much of the consequences of Stone’s actions; the hundreds of kilos of cocaine that Earl transports per trip represent a huge human cost, which the movie is content to discuss merely in terms of numbers read out by various characters.

However, when Eastwood is on screen, it’s hard not to get pulled in. He effortlessly finds the tragedy in Stone’s story, in spite of the character’s undeniably criminal behaviour and callousness towards his family. The bafflement that the character’s family feels about his actions – first as an absentee father and then as a drug mule – will feel familiar to anyone with a family member with a penchant for frustrating behaviour. Stone wants to be a provider, but doesn’t fit into the traditional model for one, and he doesn’t understand why others don’t recognize what he’s trying to do.

There are a few odd decisions in the film that betray Eastwood’s predilections. He includes a couple of scenes of Stone using derogatory language about minorities, which are intended to inject some humour and demonstrate Stone’s eccentric approach to acceptance (albeit by using the wrong words). It’s not hard to see what Eastwood is going for, but some viewers may bridle at first. And then there’s a couple of sequences of Stone cavorting with scantily clad women, sixty years his junior. Again, it’s meant to show that Stone is not some doddering elder, but the decision to have the camera leer at the women might strike some as excessive.

The sum of the experience is still a positive one. It’s nice to see Eastwood change things up from his recent run of Patriotic Chronicles of Noteworthy and/or Heroic Americans™. And even if you find The Mule tiresome or lacking detail, it also serves as a great companion piece for the other release about a geriatric crooks this year, The Old Man and the Gun. Both films have useful observations to make on the criminal mindset, especially when it persists into old age.

Will Eastwood appear on our screens in the future? It’s hard to tell; maybe he just needs the right inspiration. So whatever happens, we need to make sure we keep him away from a zoo.

The Mule gets three stars out of four.

Stray thoughts

• The film really needed more of a cat-and-mouse dynamic between Stone and Cooper’s character.

• It would be interesting to know how much of Alison Eastwood’s performance is based on her own relationship with her father.

• We get exactly one awesome Clint growl in this movie.