There is something inspiring about seeing Clint Eastwood, actor, filmmaker, living movie legend and at times controversial figure, continue to act and direct into 90 years of age. Shot during the pandemic, Cry Macho (Cry Macho: the road to redemption) is his 39e film as a director. He also plays the main role, that of Mike Milo, a former rodeo champion who accepts a mission that looks like a redemptive odyssey. So here he is on his way to Mexico, where he must find the teenage son of an old friend and bring him back to him.
Obviously, the boy’s mother does not hear it that way. After having tried to dissuade Mike by seducing him (we will come back to this grotesque scene), she launches an inept henchman after her, and therefore not threatening at all: for the tension, we will come back. At this point, in one of the many narrative shortcuts that the film has the secret, Mike has already found the son, Rafael, who is delighted to follow him.
A kind of road moviecut in the middle by a long interlude in a Mexican village where Mike falls in love, and vice versa, with a lively widow who owns a restaurant where you never see customers. Relaxed and never terribly plausible, the plot hardly captivates. A late revelation, and moreover predictable, about the father’s motives changes nothing.
The sequences in the car and during the forced stay in the village are an opportunity to explore the theme of transmission, of the legacy, Mike taking it upon himself to instruct Rafael, both on the world of horses and on life in general. In the mentor and protégé genre, Million Dollar Baby (The Million Dollar Girl, 2004) bat Cry Macho flat seam.
Contradictory aims
With a similar title, we can guess that Eastwood has an idea behind his head, he who, for legions of moviegoers, is the definitive incarnation of the cowboy. And in fact, the actor-director serves his young traveling companion this line in the third act: “I’ll tell you… Wanting to be a big tough guy, a“ macho ”, it’s ridiculous. People are playing the tough guys, to show that they have guts. They only have that left, after all. “
Basically, Eastwood here comments on his cinematographic “character” in the broad sense. Alas, who expects an introspective work will have to be content with this short passage, or else review Unforgiven (Unforgivable, 1992), a twilight masterpiece in which the author undertook a magnificent examination of conscience in the form of a balance sheet.
Conversely, Cry Macho remains superficial. And contradictory, because despite its apparent call to review the codes of masculinity, here is a film in which the two female characters are confined to the oldest clichés there is.
Indeed, we have on one side Leta, Rafael’s mother always celebrating, drinking and wanting to fuck, and who is therefore “bad”, and on the other, Marta, the restaurateur who watches over. Mike with boundless generosity in showing him a chaste affection, and which is therefore “good”. One is vile, the other is holy: hard to be more reactionary. The director of Bridges of Madison County (On the road to Madison, 1995) has accustomed his world to the better.
And that’s not to mention the racist overtones. Said female characters reflect a narrow vision of Mexican women, the local authorities are unilaterally corrupt and all these local inhabitants, Rafael included, sketched out with benevolent condescension …
Note here that the posthumous script is by N. Richard Nash (1913-2000), with revisions by Nick Schenk (Big Torino, 2008), based on the novel of the first published in 1975, this perhaps partly explaining this. The action takes place in 1979-1980, but that does not excuse the clumsiness or the stereotypes.
Uneven play
At least the actresses are persuasive. In the role of Marta, Natalia Traven exudes the right mix of warmth and kindness. In Leta’s, Fernanda Urrejola exudes a fierce charisma. Thanks to her, you don’t wear too much tooth enamel by squeaking it during the two scenes she shares with Eastwood. The one where Leta tries to lure Mike into her bed must be seen to be raw (way of speaking).
Young Eduardo Minett, on the other hand, lacks naturalness. In his defense, Rafael’s role is very poorly defined. He is first presented as a street criminal, cunning and aged before his age, only to transform him the next moment into a kid full of innocence, even candor at times, in complete contradiction with the trials he has lived.
Clint Eastwood puts all of this on stage with a refined know-how, but not particularly inspired. As for Clint Eastwood, the actor, we feel that he is having fun, multiplying the small “signature” touches, as when he stands with his back and turns his head three quarters in order to throw this famous angry look at anyone who sees it. pissed off. For a little, that would be almost enough to justify the existence of a film.
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