The Mule

Sharon Stone is starting to look a little frail. Her performance in ‘The Mule’ is fickle, brittle and slightly nervous- but rather than detracting from the film, this actually helps.

Billy Zane plays Aaron Talbert, an American who is sympathetic to the plight of Mexicans hoping to cross the border in search of a better life. His ideals run him afoul of Juanita (Giovanna Zacarias,) a tough-as-nails people smuggler who places no value on a few human lives.  

When Talbert goes missing, it falls to his sister Sofie (Sharon Stone) to rescue him. With the help of a DEA agent, she crosses the border and enters a shady underworld ruled by drugs, bribery and human trafficking.  

The Mule is very obviously a film made on a budget; this is evident in the repetitive, often amateurish soundtrack, slightly dodgy acting from incidental characters, not-quite-right editing and the frequent re-use of locations.  

However, it does have a few things going for it. The plight of Mexican refugees is depicted with stark, oppressive realism. Stone’s shaky performance, filled with almost hysterical emotional moments, just adds to that realism. Throughout the film she appears in the same change of clothes, usually without make-up, often looking terrible- as any of us would, after being crammed into an oil tanker and driven over bumpy roads across the Mexican desert.  

The first half of the movie really does plod, thanks to a bare-bones story that has been drawn out for far too long, and some lingering ‘deep & meaningful’ moments of eye contact that would put Days of Our Lives to shame. However in the last half hour or so things do pick up. There are some twists that you’ll probably see coming, but which are enjoyable nonetheless, and help to accelerate the film’s plot. 

On top of this there are some painfully brutal moments- enough to make you feel genuinely uncomfortable, but they are within their proper context under the bleak and violent umbrella of the movie’s setting.