Cry Macho

Since I started going to movies, the star I have seen most often is Clint Eastwood. My mom (a big fan of Eastwood, though William Holden was her favorite) told me she and my dad brought me along to see Hang ‘Em High when I was less than a year old. She said I was mesmerized and made it through most of the movie awake, fighting through occasional crying jags. I saw Eastwood in 1979 at a drive-in theater. The flick was Escape at Alcatraz, and I loved it. The ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s brought many good (or better) Eastwood movies (Tightrope, Pale Rider, White Hunter Black Heart, Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, and Million Dollar Baby, among them). He appeared in fewer fictional movie offerings in the 2010s, though I caught Trouble with the Curve and The Mule. In 2021, he returns with Cry Macho, a neo-Western drama. Although it’s playing on HBO Max (for 30 days) and most people who watch it will do so at home, I had to see Eastwood on the big screen. In my seventh decade on this planet, I have seen at least one Eastwood film at the movie theater in every one of them.

I’m glad Clint has written and directed a movie after turning 90 (he’s currently 91). The careers of some other huge stars haven’t lasted nearly as long. Humphey Bogart was only 56 when his last movie, The Harder They Fall, came out, and John Wayne was 69 when The Shootist, in which he played his final role, was released. From Eastwood’s debut, Revenge of the Creature (where he appeared uncredited) to his latest effort, he has been acting in the cinema for more than 56 years. There’s something comforting about seeing a man who has been around so long wearing a cowboy hat he might have worn decades earlier and playing in another Western. Still, I must judge Cry Macho on its own merits and not let nostalgia overtake me. Sadly, I have to say, it doesn’t satisfy.

Eastwood depicts Mike Milo, a retired rodeo star who, in 1979, is fired by Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakim). The following year, Howard asks him to travel from Texas to Mexico City and retrieve his 13-year-old son Rafo (Eduardo Minett). Howard claims the boy is being abused by his mother Leta (Fernanda Urrejola). Since Howard gave him a job after his rodeo days ended, Mike agrees to give it a go. In Mexico City, Leta informs Mike that Rafo is a rotten kid. Mike finds him at a cockfight with his rooster named Macho, explains the situation, and soon after, Mike, Rafo, and Macho are in Mike’s truck heading for Texas. Leta sends her minion Aurelio (Horacio Garcia Rojas) to retrieve Rafo, which eventually leads to a confronation or two. After Mike’s truck gets ripped off, he finds himself in a Mexican village, where he breaks horses and becomes a veterinarian of a sort. He also enjoys the company of a widow, Marta (Natalia Traven).

The script by Schenk and N. Richard Nash is based on Nash’s 1975 novel of the same title. There were several attempts to make a movie out the screenplay with various actors in the lead role, including Roy Scheider, Burt Lancaster, Pierce Brosnan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Finally, Eastwood, who was offered the chance to star in the movie in the 1980s but refused (though he said he would direct it), agreed to star, direct, and produce Cry Macho. Given how low-grade the script is, it’s remarkable anyone thought making it was a good idea. The conflicts are woefully inadequate. Leta says Mike won’t find Rafo, and it also comes out that two men were sent to search for Rafo before Mike, one of whom left before locating him. Yet a little more than five movie minutes after arriving in Mexico, he spots the child (rendering the info he has heard irrelevant and, unfortunately, amusing). Rafo is said to be a terror, but despite some arguments with Mike, he’s generally well-behaved. The movie would have benefitted from Rafo being a hellion because it could have been used to create drama.

Other parts don’t convince. Mike and Rafo stop along the roadside to eat. They are maybe 50 feet away from the truck. Guess what occurs? (Moderate spoiler) Something that wouldn’t happen if Mike hadn’t left keys in the truck. Mike is too smart for that stupid blunder. Leta’s henchman Aurelio waits for the main characters outside of a restaurant. Aurelio is 40 and seems strong physically. Yet Mike fires a punch at him, and he’s as helpless as mouse in molasses. That Mike, who is old and frail, would leave robust 40-year-old man begging people to help him get Rafo (whom he claims is his son) is ludicrous. When Aurelio arrives toward the end and his efforts are thwarted again, it’s more comic than dramatic. Aurelio is so inept, it’s impossible to believe the Leta would have hired him. (Spoilers) There’s also a scene where Mike tells Marta he and Rafo must leave. It’s played for drama, like Mike may not return. Since they don’t seem far from the border and since he reunites with Marta shortly after (possibly in a couple of hours), the lack of explanation for the hasty exit is phony. Mike would have told her he would return after dropping off Rafo.

There aren’t enough incidents and that becomes more conspicuous because Eastwood’s doesn’t give directorial push to make up for that lack. The pacing becomes even slower as the film concentrates on the Mike-Marta relationship and when Mike tends to the town’s animals. The primary story has little left by that point and there’s a little animal humor (that made me think of Every Which Way but Loose, though there is no orangutan). Still, this section is sleepy.

I found attractive elements in Cry Macho. The Will Banister track, “Find a New Home,” is a delight. This country song is pleasingly melodic, sung with effective shadings by Bannister, and fits perfectly with the movie’s tempo. I enjoyed Mark Mancina’s amiable score as well. Ben Davis’s photography finds some striking vistas of the desert’s ragged beauty, often providing something engaging to see during the times when I wished more were going on. There’s a gorgeous shot of Mike shown in silhouette against the setting sun. Also, Mike driving to work in the opening sequence is visually intriguing because Eastwood uses many varied and nicely differentiated shots.

Eduardo Minett is believable in the role of Rafo. “Touch me and I’ll kick your ass, old man,” he tells Mike. The words are said without the fire that would make him the troubled kid he’s said to be. Minett projects a stiffness that works against his character. Dwight Yoakam plays Howard with a plausible urgency to get back his son. One of Fernanda Urrejola’s tasks as Leta is to credibly show she wants Mike to have sex with her. (Urrejola was in her late 30s during the filming, though she’s made to look about 10 years older.) She doesn’t succeed, but then no could, given the gigantic age difference. Though Urrejola isn’t in much of the film, her crazed energy gives vigor to her scenes.

I love Eastwood, but he’s simply too old as Mike Milo. Eastwood has said he was too young to play Mike 30-plus years ago when he was asked to. Mike in the novel, however, is 38. Today, Eastwood’s age is closer to 138. Had he played the part when he was 65, that would have been fine. (Arnold Schwarzenegger was set to star in a film version of this story—which was cancelled because it came out that he impregnated a household employee—when he was in his mid-60s.) If I were going strictly by Eastwood’s face as Mike, I might guess he’s in his 70s. His voice and body suggest he’s an elderly man, at or nearing 85. And that’s why he’s unconvincing punching a man less than half his age (without resprisal), and why Leta’s desire for him is flat-out absurd. Putting age aside, he does a successful job of handling Rafo, knowing how strenuously to object when the boy becomes upset and when to be gentle. Eastwood has a scene where he explains to Rafo how Howard gave him his “life back” and does the quaking lip bit he has done before (in Million Dollar Baby and Trouble with the Curve). Yet it still works, giving a compelling reason why Mike took the job. And by explaining why the loss of his wife and son in a car accident almost destroyed him, he gives Mike a little emotional depth. Occasional grumpiness aside, Mike’s generally a kind old man, so when he meets Marta, I pulled for him to win her. That’s what a good actor in this type of role must do. And it’s the reason many Eastwood fans will watch Cry Macho and enjoy it.