There are a handful of directors whose work I will always try to make time for. One of them is Clint Eastwood. At 91, he may be the oldest director working today if not of all time, and he has a fairly steady output of one movie or so a year. That may come from the fact he tends to work fast during the shooting period, and I’ll be the first to admit that his work these days is not as good as his older work. Still, when he casts the right actors, he can generally pull off an at least above-average movie that I will enjoy as I watch it.

Plus, every so often, he puts himself in front of the camera like he does in his latest movie, Cry Macho.

Former rodeo performer MIke Milo (Eastwood) is a broken down old man, having lost his rough riding skills to a severe back injury as well as to drink and pills. Sure, he’s cleaned up, but he’s clearly well past his prime, leading to his dismissal from his job in 1979’s Texas. A year later, his former boss Howard (Dwight Yoakam) comes to Mike with a request: can Mike go down to Mexico and pick up Howard’s 13 year old half-Mexican son Rafo (Eduardo Minett)? The man seems to want the boy for the best of reasons, even promising his son will be very happy on a ranch living the cowboy life because what boy wouldn’t want that?

Given the time period, I was genuinely sure Rafo would have no interest in riding horses and ranching, but that turns out not to be the case, so the movie has that going for it.

Mike, if for no other reason than he owes Howard a favor or two, makes the journey and finds Howard’s ex-wife may not much care for Rafo either, as the boy may be a problem child who spends a lot of time at the local cockfights. That turns out to be the case as Rafo has a fighting cock named Macho that he brings with him everywhere. And while there are some things Howard left out, the real journey is Mike and Rafo bonding over their mutual love of living the cowboy life while trying to find a way to get Rafo to the other side of the border when it comes out that other people are looking for the boy.

The movie’s key hook here is Eastwood as Mike. He doesn’t do as much acting as he used to, but when he does, he’s playing off his iconic image as one of the faces of the Western, particularly one that’s gotten a lot older and isn’t as spry as he used to be even if he does know a thing or two more than whatever younger people are hanging around him. His storytelling style is still a slow, graceful one that works best when it has some strong actors and good scenery in front of the camera. Cry Macho doesn’t quite have the strong cast of, say Richard Jewel, Eastwood’s Mike also spends a good time with a younger person of color who teaches the old white man about the younger person’s culture like in Gran Torino. But again, this is Eastwood’s image at work as the aging cowboy generally works. He’s an experienced man with a little bit of glint in his eye that can win over Rafo and even romance an older Mexican widow in a town where the two stay for a while. He’s good with animals and still knows how to break a wild horse. OK, Eastwood’s Mike breaking the horse is a rather clumsy use of a stunt double when the horse is bucking and then close-ups of Mike on the horse are obviously not matching, but the point is Mike’s general gifts for how to care for animals help win himself over for people.

If anything, Eastwood’s Mike is, perhaps oddly enough, a little too old for this role. Eastwood, as I said above, is 91 years old. It’s great that he’s working, but it does raise the question of why anyone would send him to Mexico to retrieve a boy from potentially disreputable people. Even the widow Martha, a grandmother, looks a little too young for Mike. Had the character been played by an actor in his 60s or 70s, still an old man but not that old, it might have worked a little better, but it’s still working off Eastwood’s general charm and iconic image, so it’s understandable why he gave the role to himself. I can see that and maybe the general pacing being a bit of a minus for a lot of people, but I dug it. I also tend to grade Eastwood on a curve, so keep that in mind.

Grade: B-


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