Cry Macho
Clint Eastwood as a former rodeo star teams up with a rooster and a 12-year-old boy in an implausible and meandering study of redemption.
Clint Eastwood and Eduardo Minett
Clint Eastwood is the personification of male masculinity. While the concept is addressed at one point by Eastwood’s former rodeo star Mike Milo – “this macho thing is overrated” – it is hardly the driving force of Clint’s thirty-ninth film as director. In fact, the Macho of the title is the name of a rooster, a fighting cock that belongs to a twelve-year-old boy. So this is the story of a boy and a rooster and the old man sent to rescue him from his abusive mother.
As a contemplation of faltering manhood in the wide open spaces of North America, Cry Macho is the sort of vehicle that once would have invited the services of Richard Farnsworth or Harry Dean Stanton. Now that both of those actors are no longer with us, Clint Eastwood would seem to be a reasonable replacement as he turns 92 on his next birthday. But Eastwood does bring a degree of expectation: a hard man who has managed to carve his place in a hard world. Even in his more recent starring roles, in Gran Torino (2008) and The Mule (2018), he plays a man you wouldn’t want to cross. Here, bravely, he is attempting to upend his stony persona, bringing us a more gentle, redemptive figure who has a knack for healing animals (“They must think I'm Dr Dolittle or something,” he mutters).
Following an accident in the ring, Milo has fallen into bad ways, largely involving painkillers and alcohol. But he can still speak his mind and when his employer (Dwight Yoakam) asks him to clear out his locker, he observes, "You know, Joe, I've always thought of you being a small, weak, gutless man. But you know, there's no reason to be rude." But Milo owes Joe a favour and agrees to go to Mexico to rescue the latter’s son, Rafo (Eduardo Minett), from the clutches of the boy’s abusive mother. The film has been given a 12A certificate for, besides the violence and ‘moderate language’, for ‘child abuse references.’ However, Minett’s enunciation and Mexican accent is such that this segment of exposition was completely lost on me.
Without wishing to give too much away, Eastwood does get to exhibit his brawn and fists, which seems par for the course for the actor. More surprising, though, is his encounter with two different women which, considering his age, might be considered odd. In light of the recent debate regarding older actors romancing younger women – such as a 53-year-old Daniel Craig bedding the 36-year-old Lea Seydoux in No Time to Die – the 39-year age gap between Eastwood and his 52-year-old female co-star Natalia Traven might seem a step of vanity too far. Should Eastwood decide in the near future to play a man his own age – with all the frailties and senior moments that that could entail – the result might be really interesting. As it is, Cry Macho – adapted from the 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash – previously began production in 1991 with a 59-year-old Roy Scheider as Milo, but was abandoned before completion. Of course, that would have been a whole different story.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Natalia Traven, Dwight Yoakam, Fernanda Urrejola, Horacio Garcia Rojas, Ivan Hernandez, Marco Rodríguez.
Dir Clint Eastwood, Pro Albert S. Ruddy, Tim Moore, Jessica Meier and Clint Eastwood, Screenplay Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash, from the novel by N. Richard Nash, Ph Ben Davis, Pro Des Ron Reiss, Ed Joel Cox and David Cox, Music Mark Mancina, Costumes Deborah Hopper.
Malpaso Productions-Warner Bros.
104 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 12 November 2021. Cert. 12A
