Mark Reviews Movies: CRY MACHO

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 16, 2021

Cry Macho marks Clint Eastwood's first movie, both as an actor and a director, as a nonagenarian. That's an accomplishment in general, but in Eastwood's case, it seems both impossible and inevitable. The man has been acting on television and in movies for more than six decades, and he has been directing movies for 40 years. Most would have retired by this point in one's life, but once Eastwood started making about a movie a year into his 80s (as has been his workload since he began directing), there seems to be only one thing, which will remain unspoken, that will stop him.

Eastwood has been playing the old man on screen for a few decades now, but this might be the first movie in which he actually looks, talks, and seems to be a legitimately old man. That's not an insult: more power to any actor who can get away with an audience believing he or she is just playing old, instead of simply being old, for a three-decade span.

As a director, Eastwood knows, accepts, and, for the most part, even embraces his age, appearance, and manner as an actor at this stage of life. With the sun of the New Mexico desert—standing in for the desierto of Mexico—beating down on Eastwood, the wrinkles are deeper, the face is gaunter, and the frame is more a shadow than they've ever been for the always creased and lean actor.

Eastwood knows best what his presence on screen means. That fact becomes increasingly clear as this story—about a former rodeo rider and fired ranch hand and current seeker of an old friend's estranged teenage son—progresses.

When Eastwood's Mike Milo speaks of riding horses and being a cowboy and getting into fights, there's a whole history of movies in those statements. Hell, there's a whole history of the man revealed with a single glare or snarl or grimace. Another filmmaker might use that reality for nostalgia or parody. In Eastwood's own hands, it's simply the reality of himself and his history on screen.

Here, of course, we have to talk about the movie itself, which is unfortunate. It's as dry as its locales, as slow as a tumbleweed moving with a mild breeze, and as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. Eastwood does get away with a fair amount here, simply by his presence and our knowledge that he made the movie. We get to watch him, playing an externally tough man filled with regret and grief, affirm and subvert his screen persona.

In the case of the latter, there's a genuinely touching moment in which Mike, with his cowboy hat covering most of his face, tells of how his wife and son were killed in a car crash. He's gruff and composed, talking to the friend's teenaged son Rafa (Eduardo Minett), until he utters the words, "my boy." The voice cracks into a croak, and a single tear escapes the shadow of the hat, leaving a trail along his rough cheek. That's a moment that only means as much as it does because it's Eastwood performing it.

There aren't many moments such as that one here, but we do appreciate and admire them when they do come. Most of this tale is a rambling and aimless semi-thriller/chase story, in which Mike's friend and former boss (played by Dwight Yoakam) tasks his old buddy to track down Rafa, the ex-boss' son, somewhere near Mexico City. The boy's mother (played by Fernanda Urrejola) is a "nutcase," according to the guy, and Rafa deserves the stability of living on his father's ranch in Texas. Since Mike owes his pal for letting him work after a career-ending rodeo injury, he agrees.

The screenplay by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash (based on the late author's own novel, which started as a screenplay) sets up a lot of potential conflict, only to constantly downplay or eliminate it. That tendency is frustrating, because the plot eventually does become a series of—admittedly anti-climactic—chases, but occasionally fascinating.

The old man and the kid talk about hopes, machismo, and other matters that Mike has long since put to rest, while Rafa thinks they're the most important things in life. The old man knows better—or, at least, he thinks he does, until an unexpected stop in a small town puts him face-to-face with a person who gives him a little hope again. She's Marta (Natalia Traven), a widow who runs a restaurant and keeps feeding Mike without him asking (It's probably better to ignore that the two most significant women in this movie exist, in part or in whole, to seduce its much older star).

Everything about the movie becomes so relaxed that almost nothing seems to matter. That might be the point of Cry Macho, which sees its director and star once again re-evaluating his career and persona with a few additional years added to the clock. Those parts of the movie are worth something—not so much the rest of it.

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