Bryan Appleyard

Lumpily scripted and poorly plotted: Cry Macho reviewed

If this is Clint Eastwood’s last film, it’s a pity it’s not better, though obviously you must see it

Clint Eastwood, who has made old age romantic and cool, as Mike Milo in his film Cry Macho. Credit: Claire Folger/Warner Bros 
issue 13 November 2021

Clint Eastwood is 91; Cry Macho may well be his last film. Or maybe not. He has, after all, been directing himself as majestically craggy old guys for decades. Craggiest and most majestic of all, he was, in 1992, Will Munny in Unforgiven and, in 2008, Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino.

In both those films, and now in Cry Macho, he is not just craggy, he is also broken. Munny is an old, widowed gunfighter barely surviving on his pig farm in Kansas. Kowalski, also widowed, is angry with America and missing, bitterly, the great days of the Detroit car makers. And now, in Cry Macho, he is Mike Milo, widowed and a ruined rodeo star-turned-horse breeder.

He has been looking old but tough for 30 years; now he really looks old and not so tough. His chest is concave and his massive belt buckle and baggy jeans hang loosely from his hips.

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