Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Dwight Yoakam, Natalia Traven, Fernanda Urrejola, Horacio Garcia Rojas
Three decades ago my father sat me down in front of
Unforgiven and told me it would likely be the last time
we'd see Clint Eastwood on screen, or if not, surely the last
time he would cast himself as the lead in one of his films. Clint was 60
when he made Unforgiven, and back then that seemed like a hell of an age. How times have
changed. Tom Cruise turns 60 next year, and will probably be jumping off
a space station for Mission Impossible 13 in a decade's time. 90 is the
new 60, and Clint shows no signs of slowing down. It took a global
pandemic to interrupt his current prolific streak of releasing a new
movie annually, with Cry Macho arriving a year later than
originally planned.
Based on a 1975 novel by author N. Richard Nash,
Cry Macho has gone through several filmmakers' hands, with
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Lancaster and Pierce Brosnan all set to play
its leading man at one point or another. Clint almost made it himself in
the late '80s, which tells you how the aging process has changed in the
decades since.
It's difficult to imagine any other actor playing Mike Milo, a former
rodeo star who turned to horse breeding following a career ending
injury. A year after losing his job, his old boss, rancher Howard Polk
(Dwight Yoakam), enlists him to travel down to Mexico and bring
back his 13-year-old son Rafo (Eduardo Minett). Polk claims the
boy is being abused by his crazy Mexican mother. Mike isn't so sure, but
he owes Polk for helping him get back on his feet after his injury, so
he accepts the job.
What follows is essentially a chase movie without the chase. Mike picks
up the kid, who agrees to travel to the US, with his cock-fighting
rooster Macho for company. With Rafo's mother enlisting the aid of the
federales to track down the old man and the kid, Mike and Rafo hole up
in an old church in a small village. It's there that Mike finally finds
his place in the world. Cry Macho shares a similar plot to
director Hugo Fregonese's 1950 film noir One Way Street, in which James Mason plays a mob doctor who hides out in a small
Mexican village and finds himself falling into the role of the village
GP. Here, Eastwood's Mike becomes his temporarily adopted village's de
facto veterinarian. He also finds himself the object of the affections
of Marta (Natalia Traven), the attractive middle-aged widow who
runs the local cantina.
It soon becomes clear that Mike could head for the border any time he
wants, but that he's reluctant to return to the US. He's found comfort
away from the noise and nonsense of the Anglo-Saxon world. "I can't cure
old," he tells the owner of a dog on its last legs, but in a land where
time moves at a slower pace, maybe he'll live a little longer. Mike's
advice for the dog's owner is to let the old hound sleep at the end of
her bed. You can't beat time, but you can make what's left a little more
comfortable.
There's not much to Cry Macho in terms of plot. It's a
hangout movie, the cinematic equivalent of cold beers on a warm porch.
The grouchy character Clint played in his seventies and eighties has
made way for the happy go lucky nonagenarian of
The Mule
and Cry Macho. His transition from John Wayne to Walter Brennan continues. Clint
smiles more in this movie than any other he's ever made. And what a
smile! You'll likely laugh when a woman half his age starts to flirt
with Mike, but once those famous eyes start to sparkle, you're fully
sold. The old man's still got it!
The young Minett is rough around the edges, and a lot of Clint's
deliveries suggest he just couldn't be bothered with a second take. But
their chemistry is thoroughly charming, two lost men generations apart,
like the heroes of a Guy Clark song. The movie has a genuinely great
performance from Traven, who as Marta, unable to speak English and thus
communicate verbally with Mike, delivers essentially a silent
performance that speaks volumes – we see the roads Marta has travelled
and the hope this gringo stranger brings in her face.
Ultimately this is the Clint Eastwood show, and your tolerance for
Cry Macho's geriatric pacing and lack of high stakes drama will depend on how
much you enjoy spending time in his company. Personally I can't think of
too many faces I'd rather spend 105 minutes looking at.
Someone once asked Clint if he was religious. He claimed not to believe
in a God but to be moved in a spiritual manner by nature. "If I stand on
the side of the Grand Canyon and look down, it moves me in some way,"
was how he summed up his spirituality. I don’t believe in a God either,
but when I look at Clint's face, creased with the lines of half of
cinema's existence, it moves me in some way. I hope I get to look at it
a few more times.
