BEFORE: Bradley Cooper carries over again from "A Star Is Born", and I'm ready for "Avengers: Endgame" on Monday evening, I already have an IMAX ticket purchased for me. Right after posting I'm going to begin my planned regimen of getting ready for the new "Avengers" film, which includes getting a good morning's sleep, then getting the Sunday paper, re-alphabetizing comic books for a few hours, then maybe re-watching "Infinity War" just so it will be fresh in my mind for tomorrow.
THE PLOT: A 90-year-old horticulturist and Korean War veteran turns drug mule for a Mexican cartel.
AFTER: Here we go again with the "absent father" theme, only this time the character is also an absent (ex-)husband, and he's on his way to becoming an absent grandfather, too. But really, it's just that he's so senile he forgets about the places where he's supposed to be - you know, like his daughter's wedding. Plus he's pre-occupied with his flower farm that grows something called day-lilies - for a second I thought they were poppies, and we were going to get into the drug-running thing a whole different way.
But he's guilty of always putting work before family, because, you know, the life of a flower expert is so jam-packed with attending flower conventions and giving out lily plants (bulbs? shoots? seeds? Honestly, I have no idea what he was handing out to people, or why they wanted them. Not a flower guy.) And then somebody goes and invents the internet, and somehow this leads him to lose his business, though it's never explained exactly how - did everyone suddenly switch over to FTD or 1-800-Flowers.com? Was there a sudden internet rumor spread about daylilies being hazardous to one's health? Or did people start watching movies and porn online and forget about how much they liked flowers? Someone connect these dots for me, please.
Then I guess he forgot to apply for Social Security or something, because he finds himself a senior citizen with no income, and a granddaughter's wedding that he said he'd help pay for. So logically, that means that delivering a couple packages for a cartel of drug dealers seems like a good idea, right? He wants to get out after one quick trip that will pay for the flowers at her wedding (ooh, if ONLY he knew someone who still owned a flower farm - that's a tough break, there...) but then he finds that he enjoys the work, he's able to drive around with some purpose, meet interesting people with a lot of scars and tattoos, and feel productive again. And never does he give ONE second of thought to the people who are being harmed by the (probably) drugs that are in those duffel bags...
The drugs get taken from his truck overnight while he's parked at the motel, and envelopes of cash are placed in his glove compartment, so, really, where's the harm? And after the wedding, he finds that he soon has enough cash to put his granddaughter through cosmetology school, renovate the local VFW center, and also buy himself a new truck. And that's where this scenario started to get very problematic, because I can almost get behind an old man with a beat-up pick-up running drugs and never once catching the attention of the cops or the DEA, because they'd never expect this guy with a "Korean War veteran" license plate and about as much mileage on his face as on his truck to be doing anything illegal. And even if they did, he could just start talking about his grandkids or that time that Bob Hope put on a USO show in Seoul, and the cops would probably send him on his way just to end the conversation.
But a shiny, new black Tacoma truck, doesn't that just SCREAM "drug-runner"? Very fashionable, harder to see at night, plus all the bells and whistles and a top-of-the-line bed cover on the back (I'm not a car guy either, so I'm speculating here...) Connected to this is the issue that since he makes these delivery runs at pretty much his own pace, stopping at a farmer's market here for a piece of pie or a BBQ pork sandwich there, eventually the cartel wants to send a couple of thugs along to figure out why it takes him 2 days just to drive across Indiana. Don't the drug dealers realize how great his cover is? Plus if he gets stopped, he needs to have a destination in mind, or at least a couple of bags of take-out food. And a 90-year-old man can go unnoticed by the police, but a 90-year-old man being tailed by a couple of Mexicans in a sportscar looks a lot more suspicious.
Over time, there's a change of management at the cartel (those are never very pretty, I bet) and the new bosses don't take kindly to his lack of speed (umm, then maybe don't hire really old guys?) or the fact that he has to stop at every single rest stop to use the men's room (again, I'm speculating, but come on...) so they give him an ultimatum, make the next delivery on time or his services will be terminated - and he's seen too much to get a pink slip or a severance package. Meanwhile, a group of DEA agents are trying to figure out who the mule is that's setting records for how many kilos he's delivered, even if he takes forever because he never drives above the speed limit, and his right turn signal is always on.
So it's probably a bad time to make amends with his family and prove that they come first - yet that's what he does, and let the chips fall where they may. But hey, the drug cartel is filled with very understanding people, they'll probably just give him another stern warning, or a couple demerits on his record, right? I don't know, the whole premise is very shoddy here, because why trust a 90-year-old guy in the first place to make these deliveries? Isn't there a solid chance that he'll suddenly just forget his destination in the middle of a run? The guy can't even send a text message, and that's sort of a requirement for the job, but all the hardened dealers just overlook this fact? The guy's got a flip-phone with a Jitterbug plan, for Pete's sake. For many reasons, like failing eyesight, dementia and poor reaction time, I don't think anyone that old should even be driving any more.
Also starring Clint Eastwood (last seen in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Last Flag Flying"), Michael Peña (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), Dianne Wiest (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Alison Eastwood (last seen in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), Taissa Farmiga (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Ignacio Serricchio, Loren Dean (last seen in "Gattaca"), Victor Rasuk (last seen in "Godzilla"), Manny Montana, Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Vault"), Noel Gugliemi, Robert LaSardo, Eugene Cordero (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Richard Herd (last seen in "Get Out"), Austin Freeman, Daniel Moncada, Derek Russo.
RATING: 5 out of 10 bags of pecans
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