With Cry Macho, in theaters Wednesday, November 10, Clint Eastwood, 91, gets back in the saddle for a story of rodeo and redemption, film that looks like a testament for a living legend of Hollywood. The film will not necessarily remain in the Pantheon of the legendary actor and director, but it does offer the opportunity to see him go back on horseback (a first since Ruthless, Oscar-winning western in 1993) and even strike a punch.
Clint Eastwood plays the main character, Mike Milo, a former rodeo champion who lost wife and child and broke his back years earlier in an accident. Milo has been charged by his former boss with a final mission: to bring back to Texas his son Rafo, raised by his alcoholic mother in Mexico.
Cowboy hat on his head, the old gringo hits the road and crosses the border of an Eastwood-style Mexico where dust is everywhere, cops corrupt, and no one speaks a word of English. There, he will find the boy, try to tame him (teaching him in the process to train horses) while being pursued by the henchmen of Rafo’s mother.
Between the old cowboy and the young Mexican-American, a special relationship is formed, the first finding redemption and the second hope for a better life. The film is an opportunity for those who rose to fame in Sergio Leone’s westerns to reconnect with this old tradition. And come back to the screen, three years later The mule.
Prototype of the American hero, Clint Eastwood also seems to want to learn some lessons on the passing of time and the stars which fade, by the mouth of his character, who confesses “not knowing how to cure old age “.
“Before you were strong, macho“, launches Rafo, played by the young Mexican Eduardo Minett, on the road which leads them to Texas.”I used to be a lot of things, I’m not anymore “, replies Mike Milon. Before realizing that in life, “wanting to be a tough guy, that’s no use “.