Job of work

 

The Mule

When you have lost your business and someone offers you a job of work, which pays increasingly well each time you take a trip and follow their instructions, it seems as if you might have a dream job.

Clint Eastwood plays the part of a horticulturalist, Earl Stone, whose business, along with his life, has fallen on hard times. The job of work involves driving to the border city of El Paso, leaving his vehicle in a workshop for a time, collecting it later and driving back to Illinois. He is instructed to leave the vehicle unattended in a specified place for a specified length of time. 

I was highly entertained by this movie but realised much later that I had apparently missed the whole point of the story. I found it satirical in a sense, which amused me no end. The repetition of each trip to El Paso, the same old visit to the panel workshop, the invitation to the drug baron’s palatial residence with wine, women and maybe not too much song.

Time passes and Earl Stone grows uneasy about the legal ramifications of this easy money; he’s been able to buy a new truck and no hard physical work is involved. Each trip he finds the package of cash grows thicker thus financing the new truck and enabling him to reclaim his home.

Eventually the drug law enforcement people suspect Earl’s behaviour and there are some amusing scenes where only quick thinking and smooth talking extricate Earl from a very tricky situation. This of course cannot last forever and after the death of his ex-wife, which sees Earl realise how self-centred his life has been, the game is up and smooth talking no longer does the trick.

At the end we see Earl tending day lilies in the prison garden. A fitting finale, closing the circle, where at the beginning, Earl’s horticultural business was growing day lilies.

Day lilies, I have to say, hold very little appeal to me.