Premise: An old cowboy is hired to rescue the son of a friend of his in Mexico.
I'm not looking forward to the first time I have to tell my parents "No". At some point, they are going to get too old to do something, and I'll have to tell them they shouldn't be driving anymore or they shouldn't play with power tools. I'm worried that when I tell them they shouldn't be doing that anymore, they'll dig their heels in, point out that they raised me", and call me ungrateful. And I won't have a response to that. I respect my parents and I'm hoping that they recognize their limitations when they hit them and do the right thing when it's time.
What I'm trying to say is, who's going to tell Clint Eastwood to retire? The man is 91 years old. I can only dream of being as self-sufficient as he is when I'm his age. And it's not like he's needed to call it quits for a long time. He can do most of it from muscle memory. He's got a supportive system around him that masks most of his problems. Remember, Grandma on an expired license still gets to the grocery store fine most days since the drivers around her are attentive enough. How long ago did Clint need to quit? Richard Jewell mostly worked, but it worked in a way where any workman director could've done it. The 15:17 to Paris got a lot of slack since he cast non-actors for roles. The gimmick masked the flaws. Sully works as a movie. I do wonder how much of that is Tom Hanks and company being old pros? American Sniper is a pretty mediocre movie with an all-time successful trailer and a star who has proven he was looking to direct anyway. It's probably not fair to look further back than that. He lost it somewhere around then though.
The Mule and Cry Macho are, when grandma with the expired license runs into a detour on the way to the market. Suddenly, she's on unfamiliar roads and is forced to make decisions that she's not equipped to make anymore. The Mule and Cry Macho are terrible scripts. Instead of being able to focus entirely on directing with a talented actor able to fill in the blanks for him, Eastwood is a 90-year-old director directing a 90-year-old actor. That's when grandma hits the parked car or drives on the sidewalk. Cry Macho is a terrible movie. The fact that it's sitting on a 51% on RottenTomatoes, like The Mule actually being fresh with 71%, is a result of everyone having too much respect for Clint to admit that he should hang it up.
Much like The Mule, Cry Macho is a geriatric fantasy. Eastwood is an aging cowboy who is asked by his friend to go to Mexico and collect his kidnapped son. Eastwood succeeds where others have failed and gets the son. The reasoning? The son is enamored by the fact that Eastwood is a real cowboy. They go into hiding in a small town where a 52-year-old woman falls for Clint (39 years younger than him), and he immediately becomes invaluable in the town for all his wisdom about animals. It's really silly. The child Eastwood rescues is played by Eduardo Minett who is giving an awful child actor performance. Perhaps, Eastwood's standard one-or-two takes while he's also focused on acting too isn't the best way to coax a good performance out of an inexperienced child actor.
Oh, also, the friend Eastwood is helping out is played by 64-year-old Dwight Yoakam. Yoakam's ex-wife is played by 39-year-old Fernanda Urrejola (who also hits on Eastwood, by the way). The ages even line up for Yoakam to be the boy's grandfather. Why does everything in this script feel like it was written for actors in their late-40s/early-50s and they didn't bother to change it when Eastwood took over?
Also, how is Eastwood still able to kick anyone's ass? I know he's an all-time badass, but even I could take him these days. It's not ageist to say a 91-year-old can't still rely on toughness against actual henchmen. And there's a way to still have him punch people. If I was a henchman, I'd be afraid of punching an old man and really hurting him. Any director who should still be working would recognize this and change the scenes accordingly. Please, just one henchman needs to say "I'm not punching you, dude. Just give me the kid." That's all the movie needs to recalibrate this as a movie about a savvy older cowboy using how the world looks at him as an asset. Similar to a movie about a woman succeeding in the workplace because her chauvinist male coworkers underestimate her.
Seriously. Stop letting Clint Eastwood direct. He's not the Clint Eastwood you remember. Quit trying to gaslight people into thinking he's still got it.
Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend
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