The Mule & The Last Bus

The Mule

Sidey: we're here. We survived Storm. Kieran, that

Dan: that can't be an intro, can it? What we're doing now.

Pete: on. We're here, we survived

Dan: Okay, welcome to Bad Dad's film review podcast that we do films on. See? No, yeah. It's really that

Pete: Did you write that down?

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: Ha

Dan: Yeah. Cuz I, I wanted it to, to be good.

Sidey: to be good.

Excellent job, well done. But we did survive Storm Kieran. It was

Dan: not called Kir, Kirin, isn't it?

Sidey: no, it's

Dan: or

Pete: No, it's Kirin, it's just pronounced, spelt in like, like a Gaelic way

Dan: Yeah, so it's pronounced

Pete: I A, no, it's Kirin.

Dan: I heard somebody else call it something

Pete: Someone who can't pronounce it properly,

Dan: Yeah, someone on the news.

Sidey: it was pretty full on though.

Pete: Yeah, there was, there was actual like Jeopardy.

And stuff. I don't mean the, the game show there is, there is yeah. People, like anyone get any serious damage to anything that they know or care

Sidey: us here I don't think, but Friend of the Pod. Shane lost pretty much the lot, the house was completely fucked. We had a tornado, we had like hurricane winds which developed into a tornado.

So the people in the firing line of that. Yeah,

Dan: I don't think they've ever recorded stronger wins,

Sidey: top on the Beaufort.

Dan: in the British

Sidey: off the Beaufort. Yeah, and yeah, you're right. Um, a few

Dan: Yeah, and yeah, you're right a few people, including friend of the pod Seamus got hit really bad, so thoughts with them. But Jersey's done pretty well, I think, to rally the troops and, and sort out the island quite quickly afterwards.

Pete: lent my next door neighbour some bin bags, so I did my bit, but I'm having, I'm getting those back.

Not those ones, I want

Sidey: some There was a, there was a Stayat home order and so, 'cause we've had lockdown.

That's easily done. And it was only a few days, but there is, you know, a whole lot of carnage and fucking damage all over the shop. So, that did prompt a potential top five discussion for this week, but it was just going to be storms. But then we thought we'd probably done weathery stuff before. So

Pete: done a lot, we did natural disasters, we covered a lot of

Dan: And, and Riggs hasn't been able to make it, nor has Chris, and they were very much leading on the top five

Pete: So it's their fault. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: so Riggs because Chris was never going to be here. He's actually just off island.

Pete: he's gone to Germany to watch. Newcastle played

Sidey: Yeah, football.

Pete: I didn't actually know that there was a stay at home order until we were all out on Friday night. And then, yeah, there was a hurricane that night of, of booze and debauchery.

Sidey: yeah, we got a bit lubricated right here in the man cave on Friday.

Pete: yeah, oh,

Dan: till the wee, the wee early hours

Pete: with the kids after three hours kip was not much

Dan: It does, not

Sidey: Did you, did you plonk them in front of the TV and watch anything?

Pete: I had to like go, I had to go to the dump as well. I, I had a full day of stuff and

Sidey: wouldn't do any of that.

Pete: yeah, I, I, I wept. Every moment I had to myself, I

Sidey: Well, my daughter was at a sleepover on Friday night and my missus went out and did something. I was just getting a haircut Saturday morning. So I was basically left at home for a good like four or five hours

Dan: in the fetal position.

Sidey: on the couch watching movies.

So I watched Unforgiven that we spoke about in the midweeker and then on prime I found a 4k restoration of the wicker man Christopher Lee Edward Woodward's one, not the Nicolas Cage one. So I watched that. Fucking sensational.

Dan: Oh, really? Okay.

Sidey: Have you never seen it?

Dan: but I've seen the

Sidey: That's, this is the original.

It's just a, like, a re, a

Dan: revamp. Oh, revamped. No, I've not seen it in a long, long time, actually. It's a spooky one, so, yeah. Folk

Sidey: horror. It's not scary horror, it's just, like, weird.

Pete: Well, Christopher Lee's,

Dan: a

Sidey: Brit, Brit Eklund's in it.

Pete: Oh, yeah.

Sidey: She plays a kind of Aphrodite sort of character who they offer up men for her to sleep with.

And it's all, yeah, completely bonkers. And then, yeah, it's great. It's just really great. I love it. That was excellent. And we've been much, I think like you Pete, we've been trawling through Harry Potter again. Currently, I think we did about four of them last week, and we're on the Half Blood Prince. Fuck, that was really good, that

Pete: love the Half Blood

Sidey: Yeah, it's

Dan: See, I don't even think I've seen it. It's, it's,

Pete: honestly Dan. I can't

Dan: I missed it around the first time.

Pete: genuinely, I mean I've I've watched them. Over the last, like, week, ten days, or whatever, I've watched all of them again, just by myself, just in, in idle moments, just burying half hour, 45

Dan: minutes. Yeah. I, I need to give them a go that they

Pete: They get better. They honestly get better with every watch, because you just, you know, all the, the way the, the story, you know, all the little lines are interwoven, and it all sort of culminates in this like, you know, like, massive, it crescendos brilliantly.

Dan: Have you written all the books? Or read them? Yeah. Yeah,

Pete: I've read all the books. Yeah, I didn't, definitely

Dan: You didn't write them

Pete: them. No, I wouldn't be

Sidey: I haven't broken the news to my daughter that we went to the wizarding world of Harry Potter World. 'cause it would just be devastating

Pete: I think that in itself, like both you and I within a period of like a month of each other have been to actual, like actual Harry Potter world. And I don't mean like, you know, I mean the real world of Harry Potter and yeah, I was like a kid, I was like a kid in a sweet shop and then it's just made me enjoy the films even what they're so good down.

Like the payout is

Dan: Well, I have, I have seen...

Sidey: We did one for the

Dan: Yeah, we did one for the pod and I've seen a couple of others but I've not watched them in order through and because No, no, so it's I think she might be if she started watching him But she's just not been up until this point.

And so I haven't been either. I've been watching Ted lasso which is on Apple and it's actually a really Good season of So i've just started the second but I did the first season pretty quick and if anybody hasn't heard of what it's all about it's um a a chap from an american amateur football american football team is brought over to Manage in the premier league a fictional team richmond fc Because the the new owner Wants the club to to fail because it was what her ex husband most loved about all the things he had to

Sidey: it's the lady from game of Thrones. Shame. Yeah, shame.

Pete: Oh is it? Yeah, she's really hot.

Sidey: Yeah, it's really hot. Yeah.

Dan: And yo, she's really good in it. And it's just a really nice show, because he's got such optimism for everything, and such friendliness, American, kind

Pete: Is it? A little bit. I haven't seen any of it, but I, I imagine and I, I'll, I will give it a will, but is it a little bit like, remember on soccer with like Boston goals and stuff where it's all like the,

Sidey: was so good, that was really good Yeah

Pete: that was good.

Where they. Sort of like, yeah, . Just, just yeah, using all like the American terminology bit in the context of like the Premier League where it stands out an absolute mile. I

Dan: they do all that.

Pete: just be, even like local football, say like the kids are playing or something like that. You can hear the guy who doesn't know what he's talking about, like a hundred yards away just by saying one, one statement or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They,

Dan: they play loads on

Pete: a throw on like, oh, like, you know, shit. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, so, so that I've been watching that. It's been really really good. And I'm into the second series. I nearly watched, um, Cavalry. With Brendan Gleeson in

Sidey: Right,

Dan: But didn't get round to that, but it was something that I think I will watch this week.

Sidey: Okay.

Pete: Okay I, as, as well as sort of like finishing all the, the Harry Potters, I watch, I managed to finish only because I'd been, I had been watching it, like the, the full, like, long version of Apocalypse Now, like the 3 hour,

Sidey: yeah. Redux. Is it the

Pete: I can't remember, 3 hours 20 minutes,

Dan: cut. Yeah.

Pete: I've seen the film before, whether I've seen the, I don't think I've seen the full extended version before, so this was like, some of it was, was new to me.

Absolutely mental that you don't even see Marlon Brando until two hours, 35 minutes into the film. And even then he sort of like steals the show a bit.

Sidey: the show.

It was really easy to direct apparently. I was totally on board.

Pete: what I did want to talk about is today I watched hearts of darkness, the documentary about the making of apocalypse

Sidey: the making of the film, and

Pete: it just makes it, the, weird thing about it, like the parallels between like the film itself and like the, the, the, the making of it and like the, like the journeys that they all went on.

I mean, I know you'd mentioned about like, Martin Sheen actually had a, like a heart attack, just like the, the pressure and the stress, like some people got really sick just ironically with storms. Just because they were shooting in the Philippines because it replicated a lot of the landscape. And, and just the way like, like Coppola would, he, you know, something would happen, they'd have all these like set pieces like set up, set like massive sets, all like that had been built over a period of months and so on, just get totaled by storms.

And then he was like... Well fuck it, that could happen in Vietnam, so we'll film in that. So he's then like filming some of them, like, like big scenes. Some of, one of which was like the big segment where they, they go and find like the bunnies of like, not crash landed, but they're just, they're like maroo You've got the scene where they're like, all the, like the guys are there and then they go to another part up the river, and the helicopter's landed, and they're all just like staying in this like completely like run down like old, like Like barracks or something, the, the, the bunnies are there and he like negotiates time with the bunnies for a couple of, like, drums of, of oil and stuff like that.

But that whole scene I think was cut from the original one. Look, when you, when you get there it's, it's all fucked, all the tents are gone, the buildings are gone and everything like that. But that's because the storm ruined it and he still just like ran with it, he was like, Fuck yeah, let's just film and all like the mud and the ruin and everything and...

Dan: and absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Pete: but but the guy Lance that you know, like the complete fucking space He's he's the only other one that survives on the boat along with like Martin Sheen. They're like interviewing him in it It's going like he's like well You know, like, I was smoking a lot of pot, like, right the way through this.

It was like my coping mechanism for it. And they were like, oh, there's that. Did you, did you take any acid? And he's like, sure. And he's like, did you take any acid whilst filming? He's like, sure. And then he's like, what about that scene? Where, like, you completely lose it in that. And he was going, oh, no, actually, I was on speed that night.

I wanted a different kind of high like that. He's just talking, this is... So they're all fu and then it goes through, breaks down the, the scene right at the beginning of the film with, with Martin Sheen, where he's like, by himself, and he punches the mirror, and that's left in, and he's actually breaking almost like Having a breakdown himself personally, and that's, and they're filming it right there.

It's fucking intense. It's almost as good as the film,

Sidey: Yeah, it's a great

Pete: And, and then you think, and just all the, the stuff that Coppola's like really struggling with, like, he, he wanted to just pull out of it, but because he'd financed it himself, he was gonna bankrupt him. Yeah, yeah, and so, and he kept saying, I don't think I want to do this anymore.

And everyone was like, they, they just thought it was him, like, overanalyzing and everything. But he's completely mentally unravelling. Walks away with a load of Oscars and one of the best films of all time. And, like, what he had to go through in order just to

Dan: and, and not just him, but yeah. All, all the players in it because the determination to, to go and finish a film after you've had a heart attack or you know, that. Just, if you're on the edge of a nervous breakdown, to work with people like Brando, who were already by that stage,

Sidey: he's just causing all the

Dan: yeah, just like,

Pete: like that whole, so the whole segment with Brando in it was just improv. Like everything was improv.

Sidey: gone rogue. He just

Pete: and there's a bit where they even show it and he, like, he, he's just talking complete gibberish and they're filming it, and then he walks over to the door and, and, and in character he is like, and I've run out of things to say like, you know, like just looking out the window.

But so much of it got left in, and it, and it works, because it's, it's about someone, you know, who's lost his

Dan: Well, Brando just knows what is required, doesn't he? I, I remember talking about the offer which was the making of the Godfather and just the character. When Brando comes into this 10 part miniseries and how he performs it himself and how they would just revere his very presence in anything he did.

And then he did this little bit of, apparently it was true, you know, when he went to his house to try and get him to, to be the godfather, to be Don Corleone. He got some boot polish and put some like under his eyes or something, just to darken himself up a little bit. And then he put some... Like cotton buds in his mouth, and he just then turned in to like practically what you see on the TV As the finished article just right in front of their eyes And he goes this is how I see him like this how I see Donka and you just think fuck You know just amazing what an actor he you don't need to know the lines I know that part.

I know that actor. I will become him and he would say this not this and that's why All the the biggest directors wanted him whatever hassle he bought. Yeah,

Pete: yeah. It all, it all just came, came, I mean, even like Brando showed up to Apocalypse Now, like hugely overweight. I think it was like they had him for three weeks and he wanted a million a week. They'd already paid him in

Dan: advance for

Pete: for the, for the first week. So he's, he's already got a million, but this like, cause his obviously scenes are at the end and they, they didn't bring him in until, cause they obviously had a really short window to bring him in and nail all his, his lines, everything.

And in the, like the, the ah, what's it called? Like the screenplay, in the screenplay. Cause it's an adaptation of a, of a story, Hearts of Darkness. The, the guy Kurtz is, is set in Africa or something, but Kurtz is like, he's like, lost his mind, but he's completely like, gone and, and like, skin and bone and everything, and Marlon Brando's shown up like, not just like, a little bit out of shape, like, massive, and so, Coppola's like, well, this is what we've got, we've just got a runway, we haven't got time to get him in shape, so we've just got a

Dan: with it. We're not going to starve him. So

Pete: then he wanted to like go down the route of, oh, he's just been like, you know, living in, you know, to excess and all of this sort of stuff. Like, but fucking Dennis Hopper. He, they, they flew, two weeks before, he didn't, he didn't know he was going to be in the film until two weeks before. Got flown out, hadn't learned any of his lines.

And then there's a bit where a couple's like giving him shit about like that, that's not the lines. He's like, I, I didn't have time to learn the lines. He's like, well, you need to learn the, he goes, I don't mind you ad-libbing, but you've gotta know what it was you were gonna say. You have to know them well enough to be able to forget them.

Like, and even that still works. Hoppers are a great little

Dan: a fantastic, it's

Pete: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: as well. That segues very nicely into the cheese that we're going to talk about.

Pete: Absolutely. So

Dan: Very nicely into the man cave. I smelled it when you walked in, like, the front door. And it's a, yeah, the garden door. It wafted its way

Sidey: been a little while since we've had any,

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, it's, and

Pete: certainly with notes, and certainly we've I mean, we've been talking about stellar films and stellar actors and performances and so on. we've got a pretty epic cheese board tonight. So I think we're gonna go, so the one that we haven't opened yet is the Petit Munster which we've had before which is the wash rind.

Sidey: That's what's pongin

Pete: that is pongy and it's tangy but we're confining it to its own muck at the

Dan: Munster, Wasn't that the name of the guy in Kingpin? He was Woody Harrelson's c character.

Pete: Oh and then then was it Eddie Munster as well?

Dan: it might have been.

Pete: But we haven't eaten that it's not often that I, I, I I leave the soft or the the other ones to last but the the blue is is a great blue. It's a Stitchelton Joe Schneider revived the tradition of of the making of this famous blue cheese in 2006.

Sidey: did well.

Pete: thanks for that Joe.

Dan: 17 years ago. Yeah, yeah,

Pete: and and apparently it's called Stitchelton because the the guy who made it was unable to call his cheese still Stilton. So I wanted to.

Sidey: Okay

Pete: the name somehow. And then I think, yeah, so probably, probably in second place, and this is, is one of, so the people who provide the cheese relish, this is one of their favourites as the guy who, who provides it says, keep the defibrillator switched on whilst you eat this.

So it just looks like a fairly standard soft cheese. It's got the texture almost of like a Dairy Lee or something like that, but it's really kind of like indulgent, isn't it?

Sidey: It's

Pete: It's called Delice de

Sidey: But it's not offensive in any way. It's almost a gateway, but it's better than that.

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's as good as soft cheese as you're gonna get.

Dan: wasn't my favourite tonight. That was it, no.

Sidey: No. This little thing is stolen the show. This, this last one.

Pete: Well, this is an absolute

Sidey: it's a

Pete: delight out of nowhere and it's got an amazing name. It is called a Jacquard flower and goat log, which

Sidey: doesn't sound that appealing.

Pete: doesn't sound like you wouldn't go into a show and go, Oh, could I have the Jacquard flower and goat log, please? But this is a fresh goat's cheese with honey and dried flower petals, such as roses, cornflower and marigolds.

And.

Sidey: It works

Pete: It works on a, on a pretty epic level. It's like quite sweet. Goat's cheese, like the texture of goat's cheese can get a bit claggy, but this is

Sidey: of a goat's with the sweetness of the

Dan: you pair this with the toast and you're on a winner.

Sidey: it's a, it's a revolution.

Pete: we're talking top tier, straight out of the top cheese drawer here. So yeah, we'll, we'll go back there again. I'll give positive feedback about that one.

Sidey: yeah, nice. Okay. And then we'll just pile straight into the main feature this week.

Pete: Let's bloody do it.

Sidey:

The main movie.

Dan: Yeah, to kind of follow on from our midweek, and our bit of...

Sidey: so, yeah, we kept it Clint. But I took it out of the Wild West.

Pete: That's a Clint double bill. And as we established in the, in the midweek unforgiving in 91, was it was his last Western. So since then he's done other,

Dan: And, well, this is, you know, 2023, or 22? 2018.

Sidey: 2018 this is. I didn't know while I was watching it that this is actually a true story.

Dan: Yeah, it's based on a guy

Sidey: on a guy who... Which is fucking bananas.

Pete: on a guy called I didn't know that until he just said that and my face,

Dan: Leo Sharp was

Sidey: Sharpie,

Dan: Yeah, Sharpie was a veteran World War II veteran Who went on To become One of the biggest drug Mules and smugglers In US history

Sidey: in U. S. history. No.

Dan: First timer.

Sidey: Yeah and we're introduced to Clint's character, Earl Stone. And at first, he's kind of, he's like going through a convention of sorts and seems really affable. Everyone seems to like him. He's got great chat with the ladies. He says, oh, the girls, you know, the beauty pageants on the third floor and they're all like, oh, they're loving him.

And he seems to be quite the star of this thing.

Pete: What, what is this thing? 'cause there's a few of these in the film. Is it, is it like a

Sidey: It's like a convention. Well, it seemed to be for, cause he wins the award for his plants. Oh,

Pete: Oh, right, okay.

Dan: like the country fair,

Sidey: it. It's like a,

Dan: fair, maybe. It's a

Sidey: convention, some sort of thing where horticulturalists get together and chat and recognize achievements in the horticultural world.

Biggest

Dan: cucumber, nicest rose, all that kind of thing. Yeah.

Sidey: His, his world is more orchids and rare flowers.

Dan: orchids dahlias, I

Sidey: it's, it's absolutely a passion project of his, but probably 'cause we see his, his digs doesn't really bring in a huge

Dan: It doesn't really bring in

Sidey: He looks

Dan: a huge amount of money. It relates, doesn't it, to his daughter's wedding day. That's actually his daughter as well, his real life daughter. Oh, right.

Sidey: about 12 years later. Well, it, well, it pivots doesn't it, to his daughter's. That's actually his daughter as well. His real life daughter.

Pete: Alright.

Sidey: and they're waiting for him to turn up and,

Dan: Well, he's at this country fair.

Sidey: they come up, there's no sign of him and she's devastated, but it's you know, another in the long, a long line of disappearing

Dan: yeah.

Sidey: just not, he's an absent

Pete: Well, I, I think, I took it that that, the first bit where he's receiving the award was why he missed

Sidey: his

Dan: daughter's wedding. Yeah. He, he would rather be there, he bought everybody there, like a, a round of drinks and everything. And I think there was a wedding party, which.

Just cemented his memory of, oh fuck, I shared somewhere else to be today, but

Pete: own

Dan: Yeah, he, he was that kind of dad. He took work far too

Sidey: And then we see again that he, he has some some guys laboring at his gaff and clearing up and he gives them some money. So he's very personable with people. Yeah. He's he is a people

Dan: This is around about 12

Sidey: long as the people aren't in his, like family.

Yeah.

Dan: yeah, that's it. That's basically it, isn't it? He seems to be really nice. Everybody likes him, but his family can't stand him because he has put everything into his business. And we fast forward 12 years later and the business has crumbled.

There's a closure sign on the, on the on the house and the, and the plot where he works from. And he's, yeah, he's You know, at the end of, he's taking boxes out the house, isn't he? And he's getting a bit of help from these Mexican guys. And he's on the way. I mean,

Sidey: but he goes to see his granddaughter.

Dan: Just to see his granddaughter.

Yeah. There's a few...

Sidey: It's a pre wedding

Pete: Like, rehearsal? Yeah.

Yeah.

Sidey: and there's a bunch of people there.

It's just at his I think it's either his daughter's place or his ex wife's place Anyway, they're in the yard loads of people there. He walks up gets a pretty frosty You know how fucking dare you just turn up

Dan: From everyone,

Sidey: the granddaughter Obviously, she hasn't had the years and years of absenteeism and rejection.

And so she still kind of reveres him. She has kept a collection. He's written her postcards from everywhere that he travels to. She's kept them on her

Dan: on a fridge or on a wall, he notices that, doesn't he?

When he walks in and, you know, he, Oh, you kept them all. Yeah, yeah. Daddy. Yeah. Granddad, of course, kept them all and everything. So you realize they've got a good relationship. And that, as you say, she hasn't been stung yet

Pete: Well, I guess I guess she's probably been born into a world where he is estranged effectively, but because because she's used to that, she doesn't necessarily see it as like, oh, he's abandoned her. He's always been like that throughout her life. So he's been constantly consistently, you know, absent. So It's not like his ex wife and his daughter who like, you know, they've been let down by him.

She's kind of like used to that. So she doesn't have this kind of like ill feeling towards him. She kind of like, you know. He looks, you know, not looks up to him, but, you know, has like a, a pretty healthy kind of like granddaughter, grandfather relationship and so kind of doesn't feel the, the personal let down and rejection that, that he's, he's enforcing everybody else.

Dan: Well be being so, personable.

As we've seen before, he, he's, you've seen him buying drinks for everyone and, and, and sort of being generous, the life and soul of the party a little bit before, and he's not able to, he's not able to do that anymore because he's, he's outta money, you know?

Sidey: Well, he's told to fuck off from that, that event.

They said you're not fucking welcome here. He's given a load of grief, so he goes back and he's kind of, pottering around, he's got this really beat up old pickup truck, and he's just kind of leaning against the back of it, and a guy from the party kind of moseys

Dan: not

Sidey: he's Mexican.

Dan: fucking welcome here. So he goes back pottering around with his beat up old pick up, leaning against the back of it, and a guy from the back... He says, look, I, I know cause he just says, Oh, I've got this truck. And he goes, Oh, you, it looks like you've been driving around. Cause he's got stickers from all the different states.

Yeah. I've done 41 of the 50 odd

Sidey: Clean license, no

Dan: Never even had a

Pete: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sidey: like, Oh, this is good.

Dan: I know a guy that might like somebody like that. And he gives him a number to, to ring in. He, he finds his way down there and it's in a garage. He's got these you know, Mexican cartel guys full of tattoos, skinheads looking mean guns as he comes in and he doesn't appear too flustered.

Sidey: when he goes into the tire shop and they're super fucking intimidating. I mean, one guy's got an automatic weapon. They're clearly gangbangers or, you know, it's obviously not going to be delivering a letter

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sidey: they give him a hold all and they say.

If the phone rings, you fucking answer it, and you never look in that

Dan: you fucking answer it,

Sidey: is gonna be

Dan: never look in that bag.

Sidey: he says don't, no, don't

Dan: that was weird by them, but they

Sidey: I thought that was weird by them, that they were like, okay, well we'll just let him have it in the boot. And also, like, so fucking naive.

Pete: Well, it

Sidey: He obviously knows he's breaking the law, right?

Pete: Well, that's the thing. I th I, I, at first I thought. I thought that this was going to play out that he's like a, an old guy, full on hard times and, you know, and he's being naive, he's like, well, I really like driving, so if you want me to, that's one thing I can still do really well and I've got this old reliable car that, you know, so I'm gonna, I'm just gonna do some like errands and stuff, that's how I thought it was going to play out, but then the, the, the, the further the film went on, the more people.

Yeah.

Dan: the more... Obvious. The

Pete: and his

Sidey: He's just all in

Pete: reaction or emotion to anything that, that then kind of transpires makes me think that he knew what he was doing. He knew what it was at the beginning. He knew that in the bag, there's going to be drugs, guns, money, whatever it

Sidey: when they say you drop it here, you fuck off for a bit. Leave the keys there. When you come back there'll be

Dan: he's, he's old. He, he's, he's, he's a little bit vulnerable maybe. But you think of the life this guy's led.

He's, he's a World war veteran. He's been strained by his

Sidey: I think it's The Korean

Pete: career moron.

Dan: War, you know? But still, you know, he's seen action. He, he's like. Could have been dead already, probably. You know, you have that mindset where you've, you've survived a war you've been cut off by your family and here's an opportunity to make some fucking money.

Like, you know, he gets about a thousand dollars for every kilo, which is... What i've read after this they don't make that explicit in the film, but he's shifting fucking kilos and kilos

Sidey: Well, in this one he, the first drop, he opens the glove compartment and there's an envelope and it's full of cash. And he's really surprised.

I dunno if obviously the money was never discussed. But he's got enough that he can do some stuff for his daughter and he can do all this other stuff. And so then it goes back and it goes to the old veterans bar. wHich is being shut down. And the guy says, you know, if only we had 25 grand or something like that, whatever the number is, you know, that's that to keep it going.

And it just cuts to like

Dan: Fifth run.

Sidey: Yeah, run number two. And he's off doing another one.

Dan: And you just

Sidey: And he kind of gets instantly gets pally with the other people. So the guy that's there at the first drop and knocks on the window and says, If you want to do some more, ring this number. And he says, no, no, it's like big, like

Dan: nah, it's a one time

Sidey: And the next time he sees him, the guy's sort of like having a little nap, and he just like bangs on his window and the guy's like, oh, hey. And you're like, these guys are fucking ruthless cartel killers. is again a bit

Pete: a bit of a theme through the film, where they sort of like, they see him as like a sweet old man, but I guess, you know, in some respects, he's,

Dan: he's, no

Pete: not per he's not perfect, because,

Sidey: from it

Pete: because as you, as you can see, no, I mean, he's not perfect for, for that job, because obviously, I mean, he's old as fuck, right?

Clint Eastwood is really old, and like, he looks old and frail and everything.

Dan: he's a bit dithery.

Pete: He's, he is a bit dithery. His, his van looks like it could break down at any minute and so on. But because he's got like a clean license, because he's an old guy, there's going to be such a small amount of suspicion on him.

They're not going to, you

Sidey: What we see, we're literally shown that the next, cause he gets a new van, his old van dies, he gets a new

Dan: I was thinking, here's the problems now,

Sidey: Straight away you're thinking, well that's going to draw attention. But in actual fact, it's so generic in this part of the world.

There's a lot of these and when there's a whiff of suspicion, it's not the 90 year old white guy that gets pulled over and we see it when they pull they, they're worried and it's all black guys that are getting pulled over.

Pete: a Mexican. Yeah, or like, Hispanic.

Dan: know, this is, this is like statistically Five minutes could end my life. It's the most it's the most dangerous of my life. You know that anything can happen now

Sidey: Because we are introduced to the law law enforcement

Dan: Which is bradley cooper

Sidey: Lawrence Fishburne is his boss and Bradley's been transferred in. He's

Dan: dea

Sidey: He is thrilled about being, this is like the arse end of nowhere.

Dan: special agent colin bait

Sidey: Yeah and he's just, Lawrence Fishman's like, you need to make make some big arrests.

Yeah. Do some damage to the cartel, and that's your ticket out Breenock is

Dan: Pina is his Pena? Yeah. Yeah. Pina Pena He, he's the one, isn't he? He's the he's his big mate. He's the one that's gonna help him with these busts and, and work out how they're shifting. So

Sidey: Well, immediately they get hold of someone. This Filipino guy. tHey say they've got a warrant for his gaff. They know he's connected to the cartel. And they just, I think it's pretty easy for the law enforcement guys to say, you know, what's gonna happen to you when the cartel get hold of you?

So you fucking work for us now.

Pete: now.

Dan: He'd come in, he sits down, he goes, look, you're working for us now.

Sidey: The guy flips like instantly, he's

Dan: yeah, he was the,

Sidey: like nervous

Dan: was the runt of the litter, wasn't he? He got 470, 000 in cash and

Sidey: So he's,

Dan: of coke at his house. He's

Sidey: he's not connected to the top, but he knows Bits, he can give them bits of intel and a couple of times like he swiped something for them to quickly take photos in the van, but he doesn't know exactly and so their investigation

Pete: what, he knows what the run is, so he'll, he'll know like, what, what freeway or whatever.

And so you see there's a couple of scenes, like when they pull over other people that they just suspect might, could fit the bill sort of thing?

Dan: they, what ends up happening is they have a handler that rolls in behind him because he's done all these runs so many times, he's starting to get attention,

Sidey: he's made a name for

Dan: he's made a bit of a name for himself and he's actually at one point they say, you've got the record, you're 284.

Oh, great. Like, you know, 284, that's just great. It's 284 kilos

Pete: he's got himself a cartel nickname as

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: Tata. Yeah,

Dan: a lot. Yeah, he's, he's just kind of breezing through, and for him it's all just, yeah, you know,

Sidey: at one point he does, curiosity gets the better of him, he opens the duffel bag and it is just blocks. of cocaine, I think it was, and he just like, oh, okay, just carries on. It doesn't really have any, like, moral.

Pete: because as well, I think it's one of those, he's having a look. And then a guy just like a police car, just he's like, Oh yeah, everything. Okay. Cause he's pulled over by the, like on the, like the hard shoulder sort of And how he deals with these interactions, because there's a couple of them, there's one where, like, his handler guy is giving him some shit, and the police come over, and then he's like, oh, you know, like, come over, oh, let me show you something, he walks him over to the back of his pickup, and so, but he's like, because again, he looks innocuous, he doesn't look like the guy that, that is gonna be this mule, right, and so, but his interactions with the police are so kind of like, he's so calm, and almost like, you know,

Dan: Interested in

Pete: understated, but confident, It, it, no one's going to suspect that actually like next to like the, the, you know, like the, the golf clubs and some boxes of flowers and stuff like that is going to be a shit ton of drugs.

Dan: He's going to at one point. Sorry, I was going to say at one point just with the police interaction, there's two interesting ones. I liked that one way you're right is handlers got sort of taken and ask questions by the police outside their car. He goes and vouch for him and says, look, no, these guys are helping me move.

They're really good. Picked him up, recommend them. You know, no problem. He talks his way out of it while they're about to reach for guns. You know, they're they're looking at

Sidey: they're going to

Dan: Yeah, gonna kill the police. . There was one other time when the the dog comes out. And

Sidey: That's right.

He puts the scream on his hands.

Dan: He goes, oh fuck, he goes, because the policemen's come over and he can hear that he's got a dog barking in the car, and he goes, fucking dog, always needs a piss, and he thinks, oh shit, he's gonna run straight over towards these drugs in the back of my van.

So he, he gets some like, brill cream, or, or some,

Sidey: shaving cream or something and he wipes it on the dog's nose.

Yeah.

Dan: and he goes, oh, and the policeman runs over, you can't touch dog, can't touch dog. Oh, sorry, didn't know about that.

Pete: that's the same interaction that I'm talking about. But yeah, yeah, the dog bit is, is, you know, is, is of

Dan: And, and, and that's it. He's, he's got the, the calm and cool nature that you'd be able to talk himself out of trouble, which he does do two or three times.

Pete: Also of interest for me was the head of the cartel. I was watching, I was going, it's Andy Garcia and it is Andy Garcia. I was like,

Dan: Who else could be the head

Sidey: the cartel. And I'm watching it. I'm like, has he got a gold shotgun?

Pete: Yes. Yeah. Cause he's like, is it Clay Pigeon or actual

Sidey: He's doing clay pigeon shooting. Yeah. And he's also, he likes to party.

Dan: Oh, well there, there's a, there's a great moment where he's done the record.

And the big boss wants to meet him. So he, he goes into this lovely villa. He is

Sidey: drink well before we,

Dan: two girls.

Sidey: before we get there, he, the first time we meet Ando Garcia, he sends his number two out to be the handler.

Yeah. And just get to know this guy. And this guy's doing amazing stuff. And he seems to, you know, he's too

Dan: he seems to, you know, This guy is,

Sidey: isn't it? Yeah. So this guy is the ma, the main man of the cartel's, number two. And he takes another guy with him and they follow behind in a different car with a radio.

And they seem to warm to him.

Dan: Yeah, after a...

Sidey: he sings along to the radio, I was like, what

Dan: Well he's, he's singing along to a bit of Frank Sinatra and he's, is he going like this guy,

Sidey: Obviously they're frustrated with him because he doesn't do exactly what he's

Dan: doesn't go on the route at the same times and stops at the places, he stops where he likes.

At one point he, he stops at a motel, he's got a couple of girls around, doesn't he? He's

Sidey: bit of a lad, isn't

Pete: someone to help change a

Sidey: he? He says some really unfortunate... He calls them negroes.

Pete: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sidey: just because he's so out of touch, he's just like, he's not I don't think he's racist in any way, but they kind of let it slide because he's actually there to help them.

Dan: Gran Torino kind of Clint, isn't it? There's, there's a, there's a few

Sidey: character because he was a flat out racist. This guy, I think he's just, he's just out of touch and he actually didn't mean any harm. He was there, he

Dan: Well, that's

Sidey: stopped to help

Dan: so old, no filter.

Sidey: But yeah, he goes to the motel and he gets a couple of pros and you're like, what a lad.

Pete: I know,

Sidey: That's 93.

Pete: yeah.

Dan: yeah. Yeah. It's a bit like,

Pete: But like you say, this,

Sidey: they're, they're annoyed because he's not watching the band. He's not watching the drop. So they're like, he's fucking erratic. Like we don't

Pete: But there is this recurring theme of like, all of them are like, all of these people are like fucking like horrible, like, you know, gang bangers, right? And almost to a man. Every time like a new person gets introduced they end up warming to him and almost like going like, oh, I

Sidey: even right. So, so we've met Andy Garcia. There's been a few, there's been just, just like more drops. I can't remember how many rocks here, but he's done like more drops. But they're getting a little bit more dicey every time because there's more intel being fed to the are they feds or they.

They were feds. So they, they, they kind of know the roots and every now and then you see people getting pulled over and whatever. But Andy Garcia is the main man and I didn't see this coming at all. He's another session where he's given his number to address him down a few times. Cause this guy's obviously really good for business and he's doing this clay pigeon shooting and he just stops and he like.

Oh, and he's, he takes and then he starts falling. You're like, Oh, he's been fucking killed. So, there's mutiny in the ranks. And the guy who was not the number two, but his rival. He's taken over, and he's like, he is fucking, he was starting to get a bit loose.

I'm not fucking getting having the feds all over us, like we need to goes including wants. So

Dan: He's taken over. Yeah. He's like, he's fucking, he was starting to get a bit loose. I'm not fucking getting out of the feds all over us. Like, we need to They stop just after he's got out the fast food place throw out his meal out the window They take him into the woods, don't they and scare the shit out of him?

Sidey: they and scare the shit out of him, basically.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, well I mean

Sidey: well,

Dan: he but but he's he knows

Sidey: I did think, especially the guy who's been in,

Dan: But I did think this this is the guy who's been in you know The korean war or something he's gonna take a little more probably than these these

Sidey: Also, he's probably thinking, well, I'm fucking in my 90s, so you kill me now.

Pete: Yeah, like his, his family don't think a great deal of him. He hasn't got anyone.

Dan: This is his mindset, isn't

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dan: before.

I might be dead anyway. I've

Sidey: he's providing for people.

The way, I think, the way he justifies it to himself is that

Dan: Robin Hood

Sidey: taking money off them and he's putting it

Pete: Yeah, like you do say, I mean, he's like, he pays for the flowers at his granddaughter's wedding. He's he's helped out with

Sidey: that. And the bar, the open bar. Yeah,

Pete: the bar and all of that. So yeah, he is putting it to what he believes is like good, good causes.

Sidey: He's slowly reintegrated himself into the family, a little bit begrudgingly from his daughter, but the ex wife he's turned up to a few things and she can't help herself but remember the good times.

Dan: a little tell that she's not well. She has Like a,

Sidey: but But, we, we see she gives a little tell that she's not well. She has like a twitch and a, yeah, like an exaggerated hiccup.

Pete: Yeah.

Sidey: And he clocks it straight away and she says, well, I'm going to go see the doctor and then, but then he gets a phone call from his granddaughter who says You know, grandma's not well like really, really poorly.

And he just reverts to type. He's on a, he's on a run and he says, well, I can't just drop everything and come now. And all the while that she's been defending him now, she's seen his true colors of everything that she's been told about him is that like the family will get dropped when there's something on the family will be the first one to go and he does it and she's devastated.

And. So is he, 'cause he's,

Dan: well he doesn't want to do it this time. He probably, but he's, he's,

Sidey: enormous, enormous amount of cargo

Dan: Yeah. He's got a load of coke and he's got new rules he needs to follow. He's just been, this is just after the woods and he's been warned about it all. So he needs to stick on the straight and narrow because they probably know where his family is and all the rest of it.

Sidey: that's what I was thinking. Right. Because what happens is He, he does jib it. He turns up on the doorstep and, and is there.

Pete: Sorry, sorry to interrupt. We've missed a bit because prior to this, there's an interaction where he, during the middle of one of his runs or whatever, he ends up in a diner and ends up having a conversation with, with Bates,

Sidey: It's like Heat. It's like

Pete: Yeah, yeah.

With like Bradley Cooper's character.

Sidey: And

Pete: they have this kind of like, almost that they just happened to be in the same place at the same time and have this sort of,

Sidey: Bradley Cooper's forgotten his missus, their anniversary.

Pete: exactly. And so they kind of like, you know, they become kind of kindred spirits, but You know, the irony of, of, uh, Clint Eastwood's what's his name, Earl, like, doesn't know that he's even being, like, tracked or followed or whatever. And, obviously, Bradley Cooper, Bates, like, knows that, that they're after somebody, but, for, you know, in a million years, he wouldn't suspect that it's the guy that he's talking to. So they have, like, you know, like a bit of a heart to heart and, and, like, a real

Sidey: father, son, like,

Pete: Yeah, yeah, about the fact that, you know, they're so ingrained in, in their work and that's who they are and, and, and everything that... That they end up like letting other people down around

Dan: he even drops a big note, doesn't he? As a tip. And he goes, you keep that like, he's just on the, on. You know, the cusp of giving things away and being a bit too cheeky, but he never does it himself. He's not he's not able to, you know, he's able to keep himself together. Each interaction with the police or whatever it be that he's cool, you know, I mean, to be a smuggler, you think that that whole.

Mindset to do

Pete: Well, I guess you've got to play it cool, haven't you? If you go around all jumpy and twitchy and, and doing all the things. If you like, there'll be a million kind of like tells about something like that. But he hasn't got any of them because it's just, you know, it means nothing to

Dan: I remember um, smuggling about, I dunno, just loads of chocolate into.

The cinema, you know, as you're like a I had a few twigs up my sleeve to get there, you know

Sidey: LAUGHS Right, okay.

But he does go back. He does go back to the home because the ex wife... She's been discharged, I think, to die at home, basically. She's got, she's really got days. And so he does in fact, cancel that run.

Pete: And so he does in fact cancel the run, he just

Sidey: stops. He just stops.

Pete: got the cargo, and I think at this point it's up to like, 12 million dollars worth, or something like that. Because I was thinking that the whole time, it's like, because he's with her, and I'm thinking, Oh, they're gonna, they're gonna like come in and fucking accost him right now.

They're gonna find him somewhere because he must, he must have launched the phone or something. I don't, I don't know if I missed a bit

Dan: Are they really nervy? Because it

Pete: Well, of course,

Dan: good as

Pete: got this guy, but they've lost, they've lost him. And he's, he's gone off and, and he's with his like, like, dying ex wife. But then this whole like, part of it plays out where it's, it's not just her dying, you don't know how, how long that takes.

But then like the next scene is like the funeral, and I'm thinking like, well that's not the next day, like this is still, this is obviously like,

Sidey: weeks

Pete: Weeks after and he's still got 12 million like dollars of drugs

Sidey: dollars of drugs. Connect the dots. Surely they know who he is and where his family, like, this is cartel people,

Pete: Exactly. Like, so this bit kind of like, I was

Sidey: Like, we've seen Sicario, where we've seen, like, what happens in cartel world when shit goes south.

Pete: you're entrusting someone with that amount of cargo, they know who absolutely everything. They'd be able to find him in a heartbeat, even without a phone and

Sidey: Yeah, this

Dan: and all his family,

Sidey: this is a little bit like Blue Peter

Pete: again, I don't know if, if this is, you know, if this is all part of the true story like that, you know, the real guy's ex wife and et cetera, et cetera, like whether she died and so on.

But anyway, like suspending the disbelief,

Dan: He

Pete: it plays out that goes to the funeral and he gets back on the road and he's still, in fact, he's been to the funeral that day and once

Sidey: that

Pete: done and dusted.

Sidey: well they, they, they've got wiretaps now. And, and they, they've been listening to all the conversations about obviously 'cause no one uses names, so they're just like, well, there's Tatt Tap. They know it's Tatt Tap, but they dunno who that is.

And they're like, oh, they sound really fucking pissed. You know, they're like, I think they say it's 12 million of. goods like they don't know where it is or where he is like it's all gone to shit and then they just pick up like he's back like

Pete: yeah. because they just keep driving up and down this freeway that they expect him to be on and eventually he's back on the road. And so at that point, that's when they, they, they get him, they accost him. And they kind of rough it, well they do rough him up because you see him all kind of like cut and everything in the next scene, but again, they like take the, the funeral kind of like card out of his pocket like, who the fuck's

Sidey: fuck is this?

And that's when even the hardest

Pete: grizzled, yeah, yeah,

Sidey: on the phone saying It was his wife's funeral and the guy's like, I don't give a fuck, kill him. He's like, but it was his wife. You're like, this is the guy who just had him at gunpoint in the woods before. Who's

Pete: They feel, like, merciful. Again,

Sidey: and you're like, no, it's Scott.

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: But this is obviously, like, how he is, as, like, maybe the real person was, but certainly the character, like, he just...

Dan: little bit bumbling, just enough to get away with it all, and and... You know, evoke some sympathy from even the hardest kind of people.

This is the, you know, just the personality this guy's got. They, they don't want to just send him to, to heaven straight away. So he's,

Sidey: Well, it's still the best shot they've got of getting this car go where it

Dan: sent, so they send him on the way again and he's, he's got a load of coke. He's on the highway.

Sidey: Yeah, but

Pete: But this on the DEA.

Sidey: enough intel this time. They know the roads they get people to roadblock either side, um, he's got nowhere to go.

And you're kind of watching him. What's he, you know, what's going to happen? What's he going to do? Yeah. And it kind of, he just, he just drives up.

Pete: at one point did you think he was gonna ram

Sidey: it? I thought, because they, they,

Pete: they left a gap. Yeah.

Sidey: There's a, there's a central reservation bit, but there's no barrier.

So he could actually go around, but he just probably thought, well, the game's

Dan: Well, they had a helicopter and all sorts by that stage, so he wasn't getting away and he's a he needs to put his hands behind his is his head

Pete: and

Dan: And then walk backwards and and then when they got the cuffs on him Bradley Cooper

Sidey: clocks him

Dan: economy

Sidey: and he's got so much respect for him.

Dan: Yeah, well he remembered the conversation expecting

Sidey: expecting it to be him when he sees

Dan: him when he sees him.

He puts him in the

Sidey: puts him in the car doesn't he and he kind of like just wants to make sure he's going to be

Dan: like, just wants to make sure he's going to be okay. He kind of, he first finds that it was genuine

Pete: kind of, he verifies that it was genuine and he was like, oh, it's just a... I can't remember what it was, but he, he makes reference to like one of his family, like his granddaughter or someone like that. Oh, is that for your granddaughter? He was like,

Dan: like, is that he goes, I suppose I'm the guy that made you miss your anniversary, aren't I?

And he, he kind of half laughs and he says, well, a lot of

Pete: so he realizes that even though he is like, he's effectively like a

Dan: drug dealer that's taken hundreds of like kilos of coke for the last, I don't know, I think it's about 10 years this guy was operating, by the way.

Sidey: It's a ton, ton and a half he moved around the U. S.

Dan: Right, yeah,

Pete: lot. But yeah, so anyway,

Sidey: I think he kind of thinks, he's, he probably looks at, Clint and is like well he's just got somehow mixed up in this cartel thing that. It shouldn't be

Pete: that, that, that's it because that's important when it comes into like the, the, you know, not the, the, the, well, it is pretty much the final scene, but

Sidey: yeah.

Pete: where it's the court case. And so obviously the lawyer's going to go heavily down the route and starts off down the route of like, look, they've

Dan: vulnerable adult. This

Pete: guy.

They've strong armed him into it and he didn't want to be part of it. And then you just hear him, he just quite quietly just says guilty and they're like, sorry, what? And it's old. And even the judge says, Oh, do you want a minute with your lawyer? And he's like, no, no, no. I'm guilty. And they're like, of what?

Of all charges? He's like, yeah, I'm guilty. And they just go bang. Take him away. That's it.

Dan: they, they, yeah, they sort of try and. plan it out like the lawyer was going to get him off or something. But I mean, he's moved a hell of a lot of coke. He'd been busted with it.

They knew that

Sidey: guess that he hasn't. Ratted anyone out, or maybe he didn't even know anyone's

Pete: Yeah, he wouldn't have known anyone's

Sidey: 'cause it looks like when he is inside, he is doing the easiest time. Put his gardening probably

Pete: They'd have taken his like age and everything concerned.

I'm pretty, I'm, I'd be surprised if he had a, you know, previous convictions and stuff. But this is like serious, serious offenses. But yeah, like you say, they were going to go down the,

Sidey: gonna die inside, isn't he?

Dan: Well, he, he was like 890 or something, you know, and the actual Leo Sharp that did 10 years as the mule he was released from prison after a year. He got three years. He was released

Sidey: a year, he got 3

Dan: year. He got three years. He was released after a year and then died the year after that.

So he didn't have long anyway. You know, he had probably the most exciting time of his life. Other than being in the war, he would have been, you know, hanging out with all these people. He got, you know what I'm talking about? Couple of girls. And the big night with Andy Garcia, you know, he's, he'd been living the absolute dream and he was earning a thousand, yeah.

Thousand dollars for each kilo that he, he went, you're telling me he did a ton and a half. I mean, it's a hell of a lot of money back in those days back now, you know?

Pete: It's a huge amount. Now, the bit that I struggle and that's, that's the end of the film, isn't it? Like where you just see him sort of like gardening in, in the, in, in the prison

Dan: it just kind of ends

Pete: moves, it kind of like pounds back from, from the garden. That, that's at like, you know, within the perimeter, but just outside the actual building itself.

Now, at the point in time where he came back for the, you know, like, take a bit of time with the ex wife and then went to the funeral and everything like that, he reconciles with the daughter and, and all of the family really. And then the bit in the court scene right at the end where he gets, you know, he, he says he's guilty and he's being sentenced.

He's going to go down for, for this. The daughter comes over and is like, Oh, you know,

Sidey: she's

Pete: love

Sidey: visit

Pete: blah, blah. And I'm like thinking,

Dan: we know where you are now, she says. At least we'll know where you

Pete: know. But I'd

Dan: that was a cheap shot. But I, I found that

Pete: I, yeah, but I, I found that kind of like fairly unbelievable in the sense that You know, he, he'd obviously been like a shit

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: and, and, you know,

Sidey: husband. Shit father. Yeah.

Pete: You know,

Sidey: Hanging by a thread as a

Pete: as a grandfather, right? He came back and redeemed himself to some extent, but some of that was

Sidey: He paid for it with drug

Pete: right. So exactly. So some of that was, was to do with, you know, like, so, oh, you know, like, thanks for the flat. They started like warming to him when he started like paying for some things and making these like gestures and so on.

It was all paid for by drugs money. And then when he's convicted of it, and it's all known, like the, the daughter and the rest of the family, they're all like, Oh, you know, they, they don't, not one bit of them is judgmental or, or anything like,

Sidey: But none of them are like, Oh, the shame you've brought on our family. Like, you know, all that sort of stuff. They were like, Oh no, the money's dried up.

Yeah.

Pete: So I, I did find that a little bit kind of unbelievable, but then I guess I went into this and watch, and then even after watching, I didn't know that this was based on a true story. I don't know. That may have very well have happened. I don't

Sidey: know that a bit of artistic license in there, but he did, you know, this was the real guy. He did transport a ton and a half of cocaine around the U.

1. to all different cities. He went, it was a lot bigger operation than they show in the, in the movie. There was a, I don't know if you probably haven't read anything about Clint Eastwood's private life, but he attended the The premiere of this with with his secret daughter, Lori Murray she was so he's got this really fucked up family life, and she's believed to be the Washington born daughter who was given up for adoption in 1954 and there's all this other weird stuff about her.

Stuff that happened in this year, anniversary wise, all these different fucking weird things.

Dan: almost like his character who's looking for, for redemption. It's like Clint's looking for it a bit himself here, bringing his his daughter back into the fold there. But I, I, I thought this film, you know, the, the mule, it was, it was better than half-assed.

It was

Half.

Sidey: Half Arsed?

Dan: How half Assed? It

Pete: no, that didn't work at all. It wasn't as good as the Twix joke. That was a belter.

Right.

Dan: Right. Good. But. I, yeah, it was a little bit unbelievable in parts. I think the artistic license, just in the, in the relationships of the characters but I enjoyed it. I mean, I wasn't

Sidey: I really enjoyed it. It is a fairly sanitized version of the cartel.

I mentioned Sicario before. You see how fucking ruthless and other things that we'll have seen in this there. I mean, obviously he did survive it all and he did do all the things, you know, but They're far more rufuss than they're shown to be in, in this film. And I understand the, the way that he's able to reconnect with his family is just a little bit like farfetched in terms of how much of an absentee he's shown to have been.

And then just by being there a little bit with some cash they seem to be fairly forgiving. But I guess

Pete: I mean, I, I enjoy, I enjoyed it as a film. It was, it was weirdly it was like a, you know, I wouldn't say it was a feel good film, but there were, you know, bits and pieces in it that were like, you know, quite endearing and nice and so on. What, what I've, I've, I've, I've seen a few Clint Eastwood films down the years and he's one of those people that's like, he's not, I mean, okay, this might, Shock you?

He, no, he's a very, he's very good at playing a certain type of, of, of character. I wouldn't say he's got any kind of particular like range or anything like that. He's, you know, he can do kind of like deeper meaningful, but even that is this kind of like

Sidey: yeah, there's loads of people like that. Michael Caine is the same.

Pete: Absolutely. I'm not, I'm just saying he's not like, you know, he, I, I think it's more like everything that he does. The fact that he directs, he, I dunno if he writes any of this

Sidey: His

Pete: the fact that he directs it.

Sidey: famously really harmonious. He's not one of these like, Kubrick's who'll do 200 takes for everything. If you do it, okay, first time, move on, that's good enough. Like, it's just very quick shoots. It's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, we're done. That's how he rattles through so many films. This is 47th

Pete: But, but what amazes me, right, is that, and he, did he direct this as well?

Sidey: Yeah, yeah. Like, at

Pete: Like at the age that he is,

Dan: the drive.

Pete: to be able to, to like, you know, it's fucking hard, you know, like we were talking about Hearts of Darkness and everything before.

I'm not saying it was anything like that, but like, you know, being on set every day. You know, having to think of all these things as a director, as much as just being an actor at that age, it's fucking impressive that he's like still

Sidey: Probably keeps him young.

Pete: absolutely, because he's not doing it for the money, surely, like, or he's got nothing to prove to anybody. This is just, I know, yeah, it's kind of, he has gone up in my estimation, like, You know, more this week, having watched a couple of his films, knowing what he puts into it and everything, and like everything that goes on behind the scenes, I don't think I could just watch like 10 of his films back to back because I'd, I'd get kind of sick.

I'd want some, some sort of like variety or something like that or something from left field, but still excellent and a strong recommend from me,

Dan: so on the chat there was word of what to nominate for this week's themed Clint Eastwood week. And I thought, wow. This the last bus because it's not anything to do with him.

Pete: No,

Sidey: No. But we do like a bit of kids' content when it is something that our children are watching.

And I think Nelly watches

Dan: I think Yeah, we've been we're about four or five episodes in this and we sit down and watch this together It's a netflix joint It's called The Last Bus, and it revolves this first episode that we were all tasked to watch was, starts off well the, the thing...

Sidey: of lab Yeah.

Sort of thing with a, like a football sized egg shaped

Pete: Yeah, It's like a

Sidey: A couple of lab coats. A couple of lab coats. Drop it on the floor. Yeah. And it activates, yeah. Flies off. It like leaves like a comedy burnt whole like shape wherever it, whatever it flies through.

Dan: Yeah, it's it's like a drone. And then we we're at this academy this

Pete: well then, then you get the opening credits. Yeah. Right. And, and quite some sort of like a bit of electory

Sidey: a banger, yeah,

Pete: I quite liked it. I was into the music. straight, the out

Dan: out the tracks.

Pete: and then yeah, you're into to Brelo Academy.

Dan: That's it. Brelo the, the guy from afterlife

Pete: Yeah. He's the, he's the brother-in-Law. The the dead wife's brother.

Dan: That's right. Yeah.

Pete: he's the teacher.

Dan: And,

Pete: he sat on a bench with, with Nas.

Sidey: They're playing top trumps. Yeah. Nerd. Top

Pete: Nerd Top Trumps, is it like, what is it, Robots or something like

Sidey: It some, some sort of thing because they have a, a deep sea diving module thing. Yeah. And some other

Dan: So it's set in this classroom And they're going on a field trip,

Sidey: Well, we get a, a very quick,

Pete: yeah, intro of all the, the,

Sidey: Yes, snapshot of all the different people and it says Academy, but. Everyone wasn't necessarily academically excelling, it didn't look like that. But you had a range of kind of stereotypes. You had some bullies, some nerds, some hot chicks,

Pete: some hot chicks.

Sidey: kids. But like, I mean that in the school setting, not me looking Jimmy Saviling.

Pete: But what you also had was like quite an alarming range of ages in this. I was like, I was baffled

Sidey: Yeah. There's someone doing a driving lesson, but the guy, the daaz, is it the proper nerdy kid?

Pete: Yeah. Naz. Naz,

Sidey: Nas Naz, who's playing top Trumps with the teacher. He seemed like he was maybe 13.

Dan: Well, I think what it is, is they're all going to Dalton Monkhouse's Green Arena on a field trip. And for, for one reason or another, this is the band of merry men that all go in there. And it's, it's this big thing. Dalton Monkhouse is a like Elon Musk figure who has invented this new...

AI invention and they want to go down there and

Sidey: And see it.

When he was nine. Yeah. And then blah, blah, blah.

Pete: It's all meant to have like, it's meant to be like environmental sort of

Sidey: It's the Eden Project,

Pete: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yeah it is, yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And, and Naz is this.

You know, very like,

Sidey: He's a very enthusiastic

Dan: enthusiastic, it's his hero, you know, he, he can't wait to, to see this. Now, as I say, I'm, I'm Four episodes in, so I don't want to start remembering stuff from later on episodes. This first episode they do find themselves within this Eden project. This huge domed kind of

Sidey: well, they have the bus journey there, and the bus turns up and it's an old banger. It's late. There's a, there's a very, a student who's a real stickler for the rules called Chelsea she phones the bus company and tells them they're late, and they better fucking knock some money off the invoice, what the fuck it's got to do with her, I don't know. But when the bus turns up, they get on...

Pete: the teacher, Keeps getting sick.

Sidey: the teacher's pet, Um, when they start traveling, there's someone on the bus who gets motion sickness, much like you do, Pete. yeah. I've held of sick. He's being sick into a bag, but then the teacher, they share a sick bag, which I thought was

Dan: a sick bag, which I thought was pretty...

It was really

Pete: unhygienic that but I guess if you got to go and there's only one bag then better to share than to

Sidey: I suppose.

Pete: it do it in the aisle.

Sidey: aisle.

Dan: was a quick moment, but it did make me think, oh that would... I do

Pete: I do have I do have a question down that maybe you can answer and as part of the like the preamble where you've got the intro some of the introductions of the kids and the interactions with the with the parents were like absolutely excruciatingly awful.

But, like, look, like the Chelsea and her mum, like, rhyming stuff, and then there's, there's another one, like, is it Josh, or, so, like, there was, like, a dad and a daughter, but then, like, the friend was sat in between them, and they were doing, like, a, an improvised rap kind of thing, like, all of that was, like, horrible to watch.

But Misha is on a driving lesson, very early in the morning, I, I, like, if it finishes at eight o'clock.

Sidey: like she conveniently having a driving lesson that takes her from her house

Pete: To school, that's pretty convenient. She's obviously just like absolutely booting it. And is, is obviously an experienced

Sidey: obviously an experienced driver. But,

Pete: the bit that I want to sort of like zero in on is they, they nearly hit a hedgehog. And they rescue the hedgehog and put it in their, their lunch

Sidey: Oh, it has a good name. The hedgehog,

Pete: Uh, spra spra, spark,

Sidey: It says Spikes a lot or something like that. Spike something

Pete: like that.

I don't know if that's it, but it's

Sidey: something. No. Spike Angelo.

Pete: Spike Angelo. There you go. That's a great name. Does the, does the hedgehog feature again? I, I look for these things, like, like, made, I was

Sidey: made quite a big deal of it.

Pete: made a big deal of the, the hedgehog. The hedgehog gets lost on the bus, I know that's a bit of like, you know, yeah.

Dan: they, they do run back a lot of times for stuff.

I don't remember seeing the hedgehog again,

Pete: so the, the red, the hedgehog was a red hedgehog.

Dan: that's not to say it might not feature it might not come back.

Pete: But yeah, like you say, this is a field trip to the place that you just mentioned Dan, which its name again is

Dan: the green.

Pete: the

Sidey: there's, we learn a little bit more about some of the kids. There's the bullying clique led by the main bully, Danny, who's a million feet taller than everyone else.

Pete: like, clearly like 10 years older than everybody else. But Danny, who is clearly gonna fuck Tom's mum. remember when, like, so Tom and his mum put up, like, Tom's mum does not like Tom at all.

And Tom's one of these, like, he's like a sort of a bridge character, like, he's, he's nerdy. He's hanging around with the bullies, but you, he later reveals in the episode that he knows quite a lot of the stuff about the thing. But yeah, when they pull up outside the school and Danny's there and he's like, Oh, hey Tom's mum, and she's like, Oh, don't do anything I wouldn't do, like that.

And then he's like, I'm gonna fuck you later, bitch. No, he doesn't say that, but that's basically what would have been said

Sidey: yeah, but tom does reveal that he knows some stuff and that's not cool with his click. They don't like that and then later on

Dan: they don't like that.

Sidey: He's, he's kind of forced into doing some bullying. Yeah. Because see, he's, he's conflicted. He's still so layered, so layered.

Dan: he's got a, yeah, he's got to take,

Pete: get that at school? Like, just like, getting the nerdy kids like, bag and emptying it

Dan: well, I don't know about the emptying their bags, but yeah, bullying still goes on, doesn't it? I

Pete: Yeah, I thought it was all like, cyber bullying now or whatever, but

Dan: well, for, for the for this purposes, because there's a group of young youths and there's a.

Pete: and there's

Dan: And there's Naz, I think it is, isn't it? That gets his

Sidey: it? It's his

Dan: upside down. And his sister is also on the field trip. She's the older sister that hangs around

Sidey: He's just wait a moment. And watch

Pete: who...

Dan: Pete's just dying. Let's just wait a moment and watch this.

Pete: this. I just tried breathing wine. I didn't work. They didn't work.

Sidey: Yeah, Naz's sister is there. She reminds me of Violet Star.

Dan: Violet

Sidey: Look her up on the internet, not a work though, I would say.

Dan: I'm not at work

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: though, I would

Pete: She's the one who's got the hedgehog.

Sidey: she runs off to, to do something. I can't remember what, but there's a big presentation and when they do arrive at the green arena, there's this huge holographic projection of Timothy Dalton. What's his name?

Dan: Dalton. Monk. Yeah, Monkhouse. It's, it's Dalton.

Sidey: He's

Pete: he's, he's Dalton,

Sidey: from the Umbrella Academy.

Pete: the Umbrella Academy He's, he's the fucking lead in Mortal Engines How the mighty have fallen, cause that was like a big, I know it was a flop, but it was a big

Sidey: Yeah, it was bigger than that. He gives a sort of generic thing, but then he says to Naz, it looks like either Naz is imagining him speaking directly to him, or his AI thing is so, hype.

Pete: so.

Sidey: I

Pete: away.

Sidey: Yeah, he's, he is this enormous, like, I don't know, 50 foot in the sky AI projection thing that he speaks a generic message to the crowd and then it looks like Naz.

Is it Naz? He sees him look directly at him and say something. So either the, the tech is so good that it is able to then speak directly to people or Naz is, I don't know, imagining it. But they, they go then, they're ushered into a big presentation where they're all sat down and he's giving this message about the environment and it starts to take a little bit of a turn.

The tone of the message is like, the environment's fucked the reason it's fucked is because of all of you. It's all people's fault. We can't control anything, but we can control the people and you're like, hello,

Dan: people, and you're like, hello.

Hello,

Sidey: it's sinister.

Dan: then these kind of orbs, these helmeted

Sidey: And The thing that we saw.

Dan: The beginning...

Sidey: Escape. There's loads of them in

Dan: There's, there's like 50 of them

Sidey: And they're beaming lights onto people and he's, he's trying to hypnotise them it looked like

Dan: Yeah, but what it is in fact, they're vaporizing

Sidey: He just starts annihilating people.

Dan: chaos. People are just vaporized. They disappear.

Sidey: Are they dead? Are they, like, episodes, are they gone? Are they killed?

Dan: No. Well, what, what we, what we learned. So to finish this episode

Sidey: We don't know at this point. It looks like... They've just been

Dan: people are just being like vaporized. But I don't know whether that's true or not because that's kind of where this episode ends. They're all hiding under tables. A couple of them make a run for it and the band that's going to continue

Sidey: and his sister find the rogue one, don't they?

Yes. Yeah.

Dan: so they're running off and they're able to... Kind of turns into like Data off the Goonies, you know, he's got an A team and shit together and everything.

But this pretty much ends on a cliffhanger, as all the episodes do. Swinelli loves it so much, you just can't wait to watch what's

Sidey: Yeah, well I watched it with my daughter and she was like, Can we watch the next one? Can we watch the next one?

Dan: Yeah, cause it is, it's just cliffhangers, Phil, so, but we learn that Tom...

Who's this, as you mentioned, Pete, this bridge character his mum, I think, or there's another character, Josh, who seems to have about three different

Pete: Josh, is the one with the sick mum.

Dan: Yes, so he, he, he's got some kind of device that keeps track of her heart, and then they find that back at the school in a later episode, and he sees that the, the heartbeat is still going.

Now, whether she was. Vaporized and she's still alive or whether she's been evacuated isn't clear yet. So, maybe Vaporized is dead. Maybe not. Truthless. Yeah,

Sidey: wow, that's the guys Tom and Danny, the other bully character, he was wearing triple denim. He had denim jeans, white t shirt and a denim thing, and a denim hat. Well,

Pete: I've not seen triple denim

Sidey: triple denim. Triple threat, yeah.

Pete: So but none of the characters that you're introduced to at the at the beginning get vaporized in the first episode.

Dan: the teacher does.

Pete: Is that in the first Did you see the teacher

Sidey: I didn't see him get vaporized, but there was a lot, going on. The really hateable

Pete: know that is because Despite some of the really hateable things in this I ended up watching three episodes back

Sidey: back. Yeah, I liked it. I liked it as well.

Pete: like some of it's like

Dan: like you say, what happened? Oh fuck, I've got to

Pete: some of it was excruciating, but, like, the premise of it, and like, you say, like, the hook of like, Oh, what happened?

Oh, fuck, I've got to find out what happens next.

Sidey: to find out what happens next. Right, so we've watched if it's been that, honestly, for, That particular show, two years plus. Wow. So anything that we could latch onto that we could watch that I'm, I'm happy to watch together. Yeah. This, this, this is what, like, I, I would definitely, I'm all in. Yeah. You're board.

Yeah. Oh,

Dan: I'm happy to watch together. Yeah, that's, that's what I felt with this. And it was just one of those that were, oh, we'll just stick it on. I mean, didn't know anything about it. We were looking for something and it just felt. You know, Nelly's getting on for 12 now, so she, she doesn't want, you know, the certain stuff that she just passed and she's in that difficult kind of age where actually it's not that difficult because this is perfect.

And, you know, we've, we've, oh, go on and watch one more. And we, we, we've watched two every time. Like, you know, it's not just one. We've watched

Pete: which is an, it's over an hour for like two of them, but like, what, what I tried to do. Like, not in like kind of like my own weird kind of fantasy kind of way, but tried putting myself in the mindset of, of someone or a 12 year old girl, like, but someone of the age that this is kind of meant for, and I was

Sidey: for.

it says 7 plus when you fire it up, 7 plus,

Pete: true, but, and I was, yeah,

Sidey: I thought it was quite intense for 7.

Pete: was, yeah, it

Dan: isn't it?

Sidey: No, it

Pete: no, it definitely said seven plus, I remember seeing it, but, It if I think back to kind of like being younger and, and so, the stuff that irritated me as an adult, like the hideous interactions with the parents and stuff earlier on and, and like the, that, like Dalton Monkhouse character is like, borderline, you know, it's completely unwatchable. But, like, everything else, I'd be like, Fuck, this is brilliant. Like, you know, like, the kind of, like, the sci fi mystery. Like, it's, it is, it's full on, it's like a thriller for kids.

Sidey: But, adventure and hijinks with your mates

Dan: mates. And, and, and then, and it is frustrating as an adult watching it sometimes though because you're just thinking.

Just go, just what you doing? Don't, don't start, stop,

Pete: to have chats and

Dan: What were you doing? They're, they're,

Pete: and you already see like Danny, the bully character, like he gets his comeuppance on the bus, like Misha, who's like the cool girl, like

Dan: completely like there's definitely arcs on them all though, because even Misha's, who is cool and.

At other points she becomes really a bit of a bitch, you know, and you just think, well maybe that's the pressure getting to them a little bit because, you know, things are happening,

Pete: comment side, which one did you fancy?

Dan: Did you fancy

Sidey: The sister. No, I didn't fancy her. She reminded me, , I can't leave this here. She

Dan: Reminds me of a porn

really um, uh, organized character as well. Yeah, Chelsea. She's quite interesting because she's got, you know, just that OCD about

Sidey: she's got like, and again, I can't remember because I watched three episodes like back to back.

I can't remember where the,

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's got like, and again, I can't remember, because I've watched three episodes, like, back to back, I can't remember where the, like, where it stops at the, at the first one, but, yeah, she's

Sidey: like

Pete: coverage as

Sidey: Other one, the other bot. Which is, it's like literally right in his face,

Pete: vaporizations, but

Sidey: light into his eyes. And then she shouts and it fucks off and that pretty much ends there.

Pete: Yeah. Cause cause then in, in like the fallout from that, like Chelsea, isn't it?

Dan: yeah, he's young Bisp.

Pete: No, no,

Dan: do

Pete: a spoiler, but you just said like she's got like a plan because she's done like an itinerary for it. And so and she's got a plan and everyone else is like plans that they've either thrown them away or turn them into paper airplanes. She's like laminated hers. And it's like, Oh, in, in the event of an emergency, you need to do this.

So she's like following that to the letter and everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Well, this sounds like a win and I asked nelly what she thought of it and she might tell us here Or maybe she didn't but She did say that it was absolutely excellent, really engaging, she said, and and she said I love that it finishes on a cliffhanger because I just can't wait to see the

Pete: yeah, yeah, it's good at that. It's kind of, yeah, it's,

Sidey: is there just one series at the moment?

Dan: I believe so, yeah. But who knows, this could go on forever.

Pete: Is there just one series I it is that everything that I watch on Netflix, like series wise... Has got, does this, like, all the adult, you know, like, stuff that's meant for people my age rather than adult stuff. It lures you in, it drags you in, it sucks you in, the first episode's always brilliant, and then there's always a cliffhanger, and it wants you more and more, and then it's diminishing returns to, like, some fucking terrible payouts that, and I, and I'm sick of it, and I hope that this doesn't go the

Dan: Yeah, well this is better than Harry Potter, so

Pete: It fucking isn't,

Sidey: Don't even respond to that, it's trolley. He hasn't even seen it. Strong, strong kids recommend.

Pete: Go for

Dan: go for

Sidey: And that's it for another week. It's taken a long time to record this one because we've been watching that fucking hideous football in the intervening periods

Pete: areas. That was full of action as well. There was a lot of cliffhangers in that.

Dan: week Pete?

Mmm,

Sidey: you around

Pete: next week Pete? Mmm, don't know.

Sidey: next week Pete? Don't

Pete: definitely not around the week after so maybe.

Dan: after, so maybe.

Sidey: Definitely do that

Pete: Yeah, and everything else we've ever done.

Sidey: Yeah, and watch the mule because that's

Pete: good. Yeah, it was.

Sidey: good. It's good Clint fest and if your kids are looking for something Then we had a great kids recommendation as well

Dan: Last bus.

Pete: a reasonable week, I'd

Dan: And hopefully when Chris and Reeves get back, we'll actually be able to do a top 5.

Pete: Yeah,

Sidey: Or something else I think we should think this brainstorm something something new Yeah,

Dan: They won't let us

Sidey: all that remains is to say siding signing out

Pete: is to say, signing

Dan: out. Dan's