Cry Macho

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and written by Nick Schenk is this adaptation of N. Richard Nash’s novel. Eastwood Is Mike Milo a former rodeo star and horse breeder. His best days are behind him, after injury, and then drink brought on by the loss of his wife and son. When he’s approached by his former boss Howard (Dwight Yoakam) to travel to Mexico and collect his son Rafo (Eduardo Minett) from his ex and sons mother and bring him to Texas. Milo accepts and after finding Rafo, a teenager who has gone off the rails, the two head off through Mexico to the US border on a journey that teaches them about each other, trust, friendship and family.

Clint Eastwood remains one of cinemas greatest screen presences a true giant. However, not even Eastwood can save this extremely nuts and bolts, coming of age, self discovery road trip film. It’s dialogue is horribly clunky, some of the performances far from convincing and the plot itself is pretty ludicrous.

Eastwood is, as always, extremely watchable, but his casting is also a bit of a problem as we are asked to believe that not only is a 90 year old man the best option to bring home his son. We also still get him attracting women, one 50 and one 40 years his junior. That aside, Eastwood brings us his stock, grumpy, world weary character, but one who does asks questions about the cult of “macho”, the danger of wasting time, growing old and regret.

The relationship between Milo and Rafo does have its moments and the story does come from a good place. But the films flaws, its slow pacing, clunky dialogue, bizarre moments of exposition and less than convincing performances far outweigh the positives.

Seeing Eastwood on screen is still a treat and because of that I wanted to like this much more than I did. But while it has moments, they are very much outweighed by the flaws, which is a pity. Let’s hope Eastwood gets the chance in the future to bring us something more in line with what his career deserves than this.