Cry Macho: An Old Cowboy, a Mexican Brat, and a Rooster Walk into a Cantina…
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-minus
In Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood plays Mike Milo, a Texas-based former rodeo star and horse trainer who is hired by his former boss (singer Dwight Yoakam) to fetch the man’s 13-year-old son (Eduardo Minett).
Seems the boy has been running wild in the streets of Mexico City, and is purportedly abused by his loco Mexican mother.
As a movie, Cry Macho barely makes sense, except as a sort of boys’ adventure tale from a different era, even decades older than the 1975 N. Richard Nash novel on which it is based.
Clint Eastwood is Mike Milo and Eduardo Minett is Rafo, in Cry Macho
The story follows the journey of three improbable travelers, an old cowboy, an adolescent Mexican juvenile delinquent, and the kid’s fighting cock, Macho. They travel through the backroads of Mexico in vintage American cars, encountering homicidal hombres, wild mustangs and scary border cops, along with some more pleasant rendezvous.
What makes Cry Macho fascinating to watch, even in an uncomfortable high-wire act way, is Eastwood — stoop-shouldered, sometimes pausing in his dialogue, but determinedly taking on a character he probably should have taken on back in 1988 when he was first approached about doing the part.
Among those uncomfortable scenes is one in which Mike first meets Raffo’s rich, crime-connected mother, Leta (Fernanda Urrejola), a Latina vamp who seems to have stepped out of a vintage detective novel. In her boudoir, she gazes at Mike meaningfully and pats the bed beside her. For one disorienting moment, we wonder: Does she actually want to risk sex with this antique gringo, or just tuck him to for a nap?
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
As creaky and borderline ridiculous as Cry Macho is, the film also has some small surprises, including a repudiation of the “macho” ethic of the title so associated with Eastwood’s more familiar teeth-gritting persona. Mike flatly tells the kid the fresh news: “This macho thing is overrated.”
When an opportunity for a bout of domesticity is offered, the old cowboy embraces it. Just to show that a woman doesn’t have to be crazy to want to jump Milo’s old bones, he meets a slightly more age-appropriate señora, a cantina owner with a beatific gaze and flowing locks, named Mara (Natalia Traven). Mara and her three grand-daughters seem willing to take Mike and Rafo and the rooster into her home for as long as they want, even if Mike doesn’t seem to speak much Spanish beyond “muy bien.”
He soon shows his many American skills, including fixing the cantina’s jukebox. He’s an amateur veterinarian who, “loves animals,” not just fighting cocks and horses, but fat piglets and old dogs. When the deputy sheriff’s wife brings him her ailing pooch, Mike squints at the pet the way the young Clint would gaze at an opposing gunfighter, and growls: “There’s no cure for old.”
Cry Macho. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash. Starring; Clint Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Dwight Yoakum, Natalia Traven and Fernanda Urrejola. Cry Macho opens in theatres on Friday, Sept. 17.