Rent Cry Macho (2021)

Cry Macho review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Clint Eastwood is without a doubt a superb filmmaker. Despite his questionable politics, there’s a power to his direction where even his lukewarm pictures still have an allure. This is very much the case with Cry Macho. It’s a story that fits neatly into his own genre of old-man-learns-to-like-youth stories. So if you’ve seen the likes of Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, this story should seem very familiar.

See if you can guess where this is going. Eastwood plays Mike Milo, a retired and disgraced rodeo star who spends his days in the 1970s wallowing in misery. The death of his wife and son years ago has made him a bitter old man. One of his old employers, Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam), comes knocking one day with a favor. Howard has a Mexican son who he is sure is being abused by his mother in Mexico. Desiring to see his son again and take custody, he tasks Mike with heading down to Mexico and retrieving Rafael "Rafo" Polk (Eduardo Minett).

When Mike arrives in Mexico, however, he finds that Rafo is a troublemaker. Though his mother is rich, he prefers to spend his days and nights on the streets of Mexico, indulging in cockfights with his best chicken named Macho. It’s up to Mike to convince the kid to come with him. It’s only during his travels that he discovers this is less of a ride home for Rafo and more of a kidnapping. And with Federales and gangsters on their tales, it’s up to Mike to make sure Rafo gets out of the country safe, even with such reluctance.

You can see where this is going, right? Mike will learn to open up more about his kinder side and take pity on Rafo. Rafo will learn to get more of his life together if someone, as screwed up as Mike, can still do the right thing. All of the typical heartwarming and emotional Eastwood tropes show up right on cue. Mike will meet a Mexican grandmother in a small town and relate to her well when he discovers she is carrying for the grandchildren of her dead daughter. Rafo will learn to place some trust in Mike when dealing with cops who believe they are smuggling drugs and gangsters who want to pick a fight. Of course, these moments will have a good build, where Mike and Rafo start having no desire to be around each other, only to reluctantly come together when they need each other most.

Cry Macho is a film that sadly only feels about half there. There’s a lot of great scenes but it feels as though they cut off too soon to carry in a bigger weight of reflection. Consider the fireside scene where Mike and Rafo camp and talk in the desert. Mike tends to Macho and admits he used to be big into animals, showing them great care. He also speaks a bit about what it truly means to be a man. Perhaps these scenes were edited at just the right moment before they derail. The script is at least tight enough where Mike’s monologue of manliness is reduced to being one that is not clearly defined and requires more than just talk and brute force. One can’t help but think if Eastwood prattled on longer then a much different message would come across.

In bits and pieces, Cry Macho is a good film even if it only feels like a handful of decent scenes that never add up to a great movie. If you’ve dug what Eastwood has directed before, you’ll pretty much get more of the same. That’s the film’s biggest strength and weakness, merely moseying along as more of Eastwood’s typical filmmaking rather than his best. Kudos to him for keeping up his filmmaking at such a twilight age but it’s clear he’s become stuck in his ways, which could be seen as a tad ironic given that he always plays characters who have to learn something new.