“Cry Macho”: Relaxed road trip with Clint Eastwood

“Cry Macho”
Relaxed road trip with Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood (91) slips into the dual role of director and leading actor again for “Cry Macho”. The Oscar winner plays a former rodeo rider who finds happiness on an adventurous journey with a teenager. With this, Eastwood returns to the cowboy role with which he began his career more than sixty years ago. But you don’t get to see a tough guy from the Wild West here on screen, instead the 91-year-old becomes a grumpy, but nevertheless lovable companion of a boy from difficult backgrounds.

Cry Macho “: Dutiful cowboy meets spirited teenagers

The formerly successful rodeo rider Mike Milo (Eastwood) owes his old friend and ex-boss Howard Polk (country singer Dwight Yoakam) a favor, who helped him back to life after a family blow and an addiction to tablets and alcohol. On his behalf he travels to Mexico to bring his son to him in Texas and to settle his debt. After he has freed Rafo (Eduardo Minett), who keeps himself afloat with illegal cockfighting, from the clutches of his mother and her violent lovers, the duo begin an adventurous trip through the wasteland of Texas.

Not only the criminal companions of Rafo’s mother, the police are also pursuing them. Mile by mile, Mike and Rafo, who initially show little sympathy for each other, grow together and face their opponents together with Rafos Hahn Macho. But there are not only setbacks waiting for the two: On the way they make unexpected connections, such as with the warm-hearted café owner Marta (Natalia Traven), who quickly takes the two vagabonds into her heart. While Rafo can slowly leave his life as a petty criminal behind, the cowboy with a dark past is getting closer and closer to his peace of mind.

A road movie with weaknesses

Based on a script by Nick Schenk (55) and N. Richard Nash (1913-2000) – he also wrote the novel on which the film is based – Eastwood is sent on a journey that promises adventure but offers little. Obstacles seem too easy to overcome, too easy to resolve conflicts on the actually arduous Mexico-Texas road.

One would think that the film then puts its protagonists in the foreground if the plot is rather unexcited, but the drawing of the figures also remains superficial. Likewise, thematically good material, such as the question of the patriarchal macho existence as an obsolete model, is neglected in the end. Instead, Eastwood’s discrepancy with his role inevitably comes to the fore at times. The cowboy who gives out fist blows, rides wild horses and does a little dance with a lady on the parquet floor is physically not (anymore) written on the actor’s body. Just a few striking sayings and the skillful grip on the cowboy hat let the western attitude flash.

Conclusion

What was already apparent in “The Mule”, Eastwood continues with “Cry Macho”: After his turbulent “Dirty Harry” times, he likes to show his gentler side in his later films. For a late work by a living legend that no longer has to prove anything, despite a very flattened arc of suspense, one likes to take a seat next to the amiable cowboy in the car. An appealing film music by Mark Mancina (64), an atmospherically captured desert landscape by Ben Davis (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) and an acceptable feature film debut by Eduardo Minett do the rest.

And if the audience should ask themselves at one or the other scene why one of the Hollywood stars of the first hour is still in front of the camera, Eastwood himself gets the answer: “I’m old, so what? For me that means only that I can play more interesting characters today. Faces with wrinkles tell stories. And I have wrinkles, “he explained in an interview with” Bild am Sonntag “at the beginning of October. His latest film is not emerging as the last work: Still today, standing still is not an option for him, according to the actor. “As long as the train jerks a little further, I’ll keep going. And so far nobody has told me to stop.”

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