Cry Macho: Well, I’m crying now….

Cry Macho (2021), Dir. Clint Eastwood, 104 mins, Netflix

Retired rodeo star and horse breeder Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood) grudgingly agrees to do his ex-boss Howard (Dwight Yoakam) a favour by driving across the border to Mexico to bring back home Howard’s estranged 13-year-old son, Rafo (Eduardo Minett). Unfortunately Rafo’s rich alcoholic mum Leta (Fernanda Urrejola) has a bunch of hoodlums working for her who she sets after Mike to stop him getting Rafa over the border. Mike and Rafa have a few misadventures on the road dodging Leta’s thugs and the corrupt police, during which Mike gets an unlikely chance for a new life, and some sense of redemption while teaching young Rafa some good old-fashioned Western morals.

Its a gentle, feel-good movie, a modern-day Western starring a screen icon of that genre. But it doesn’t really work. To be brutally honest, Clint Eastwood deserves better material, its as simple as that. This kind of matinee TV movie material is just so far beneath him. Sure, we have flashes of his old brilliance- that unnerving snarl/grimace that he shows some bad guys, that twinkle in his eye with that smooth smile for the ladies, that reminds us of just how much of an icon Clint is, the stature, cinematic history. The man is larger than life, a screen persona that casts a very long shadow over anything he does now. He worked with Sergio Leone, Don Siegel, Michael Cimino, and so many great Hollywood actors- he has starred in something like 70 films, and directed over 40.

I was surprised, watching the end credit crawl, to learn that this film was based on a book (by N. Richard Nash). Surprised, because, well, the biggest problem with this film was the plot, how it seemed badly thought out, how things seemed preposterous, at times overly whimsical, even nonsensical. Tonally it doesn’t feel too far removed from those 1970s farces like Every Which way But Loose, or Smokey and the Bandit, you know, fairly daft don’t-take-me-seriously kind of films. On that level it works, I guess, but with Clint’s age…  he’s 91 years old in this film, and looks every year of them, and while I’m perfectly fine with that, it seems to be an echo of the movie world’s most regrettable tendencies when he’s being propositioned by beautiful women who are 39 and 51 (!) years younger than him.  Insulting or ill-judged, or just a bit of fun (age is just a number?), is just a matter of one’s point of view, I guess.

Usually the advantage of adapting a book is that, well, the original author has usually done all the work, ironed out its problems, long before a screenwriter picks it up for adaptation. Maybe the film created its problems all itself, I don’t know how closely it follows or diverges from, the novel- but I note that Nash has a co-screenwriting credit, so maybe the problems stem from the book.  Throughout the film, a lot of coincidences feel forced, the characters one-note and paper thin, very little convinces.

But it’s Clint, directing and starring in another movie. As a film-buff, I have a tendency to just feel lucky that I’m still living in a world where that is still true (I believe Clint is finally retiring after his next movie, Juror #2., possibly due this year, maybe next). That by no means excuses sub-par films, but heck, its Clint Eastwood we’re talking about here. Sometimes movies aren’t just movies, they are who stars in them. Movie stars, eh?