Clint Eastwood is 91-years-old but the Academy Award winner certainly isn't letting age slow him down. He continues to make new movies, and spend time both in front of the camera and behind it, and frequently both. Such is the case with Eastwood's newest effort Cry Macho. In the film, Eastwood plays a former rodeo rider who takes a job from a former boss to bring home the man's young son from Mexico. It's the sort of dramatic tale we've largely come to expect from Eastwood in his later years, and perhaps that's why the movie is falling largely flat with critics.
One of those that was unimpressed with Cry Macho was CinemaBlend's own Eric Eisenberg. He found the plot to "directionless" and the characters to be flat as well, all adding up to a lot of nothing. He gave the movie 1.5 stars in his review, saying...
The directionless plot in Cry Macho wouldn't be a problem if one actually enjoyed spending time with the central characters, but that's not something that is on the table.
Cry Macho has more than a passing resemblance to another Clint Eastwood project, Gran Torino. But while critics largely enjoyed that time that Eastwood's character saw the world differently through the eyes of youth, this time it seems that the movie just comes across and bland and sentimental without actually having a great deal to say. As THR puts it...
This is a story so crusty and antiquated in its conveniently resolved conflicts, contrivances and drippy sentimentality that it should have been left on the shelf.
Cry Macho is a project that sat around for several decades before finally getting made into this film. And more than one critic points out that Clint Eastwood's age here, and possibly more importantly, the much younger age of a couple of female characters in the film that take an interest in his character Mike, is so off that it gets creepy. The Washington Post wonders if perhaps Eastwood should have directed somebody else in the movie...
Perhaps Eastwood should have kept his hand on the reins of this pet project while letting someone else sit in the saddle.
Still just like there's almost never a movie that everybody loves, there's rarely a movie that everybody hates, and Cry Macho is finding some support from a few critics. While even Indiewire knows that Cry Macho has issues, that review is ultimately won over...
This dusty little fable tells a story that mines a gentle power from its self-evident weakness, and it only works as well as it does because it makes you worry if Eastwood may have waited too long to tell it.
Cry Macho may not have won over most critics, but it's clear that even the negative reviews are a little frustrated the movie doesn't work. Everybody seems to love Clint Eastwood and there was obviously a hope here that Cry Macho would be another movie to add to the list of greats that this Hollywood icon has made.
