The Old Man and the DEA

There's a new movie directed by and starring Clint Eastwood that will arrive in theaters just two weeks before Christmas. Most people have certain expectations of Eastwood, who was an established movie action hero when the empty chair he scolded at the 2012 Republican National Convention was barely a footstool. Eastwood has gotten a little long in the tooth since the good old days, of course, and doesn't beat up quite as many bad guys as he used to.

His new film, The Mule, in fact, features the formerly jut-jawed cowboy and star of the "Dirty Harry" Callahan film franchise as a bad guy of the sort that his younger self would have shot in the face after delivering a steely one-liner. Well, maybe not shot in the face. Eastwood's character in The Mule is a bony old bag of wrinkles who looks like he'd probably blow over in a stiff breeze. Not exactly the kind of fellow who whips movie audiences into a tizzy of righteous wrath.

Moderately feisty octogenarian Earl Stone, you see, is a transport driver for a Mexican cartel, hauling drugs around the heartland in exchange for fistfuls of dollars and sadly reflecting on the better man he should have been in his younger years. The brand new trailer for The Mule doesn't do much more than hint at what fate may have in store for Stone, who is loosely based on a real-life drug runner who was 87 at the time of his arrest by a DEA special agent.

No doubt there are a number of different reasons why somebody gets into drug smuggling at an age when many people are getting into coffins. Like a lot of things in life, it probably has at least something to do with dollar signs. Admittedly, it can be hard to earn a living at an age when one might be considered too frail to hire on as a greeter at Walmart. Maybe your retirement planning didn't pan out, and those Social Security checks just aren't cutting it.

There are better ways to plan for your sunset years. For one thing, you could get into IT right now, while your mind is still sharp and the cost of training is still relatively affordable. Information technology, perhaps more than any other industry, offers as much room to grow and develop as you can handle. You'll never run out of new things to learn, and that's probably at least as exciting as rattling down the Interstate in an old pickup, hoping the cops don't pull you over.