It is not going strong. Mike Milo lost his job as a horse trainer. This former rodeo champion has his back in compote and he spends his days in his rocking chair silently contemplating the vestiges of his past glory displayed on the walls of his living room. The memories jump to her throat. Poor Mike. He doesn't talk much about it, but he lost his wife and son in an accident. He has come a long way. The tragedy plunged him into alcohol and drugs. His boss pulled him out of there. So when he asks him to go to Mexico to pick up his 13-year-old son Rafa, whom he abandoned a long time ago, he cannot refuse. Here he is, across the border, driving his Chevy like him.
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The confidences of Clint Eastwood: "As we get older we say to ourselves that in the end, we know very little"
This Rafa is a number.
His mother, Machiavellian and nymphomaniac, says worse than hanging.
Mike Milo, played by Clint Eastwood, has the wisdom to push back his advances.
Is that why she sends her bodyguards on her heels?
This is because the nonagenarian has found the kid who participates in cockfighting.
The title is ironic: Macho is a red-crested bird.
Take this, Detective Harry.
A dull melancholy
Between the old man and the child, links are woven. They have ups and downs. The kid is pretty much head-to-head. Go to Texas, why not? Is it true that his father owns a ranch? This will change him from the suburbs of Mexico, from the sumptuous villa of his mother whose lovers abused him. Do you think it's easy to call all these interchangeable fellows "my uncle"? The street child lifts his T-shirt and shows off the bruises that dot his skin. The duo crosses the desert, avoids the Federales who follow them. They're stealing the Chevrolet. They borrow a vehicle that has the bad idea of breaking down.
A stop is needed. They camp in a chapel devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Fortunately, next door is the generous Marta, who runs La Cantine de la Luna. She is a widow, takes care of her four granddaughters. Apparently, the mechanics in the area are in no hurry. Mike Milo has time to show the teenager how to ride mustangs, take care of the animals of the neighbors for whom he becomes a kind of D Dolittle, to exchange glances with the waitress that do not deceive. Not a dog, Rafa teaches him that diarrhea can be cured by biting into cacti.
The
Cry Macho
project
had successively been considered for Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Roy Scheider and Schwarzenegger.
Eastwood is in charge.
He's got the age of his arteries.
The actor carries around his parchment face, his sandpapered voice, his Giacometti-style silhouette.
This has-been wears a Stetson and Ray-Bans, knows sign language, forbids the boy to drink tequila.
Travel teaches him unforeseen things.
What if he had messed up his life?
Does being a man only consist in rolling machines on a saddle, in bulging the torso on raging bulls?
He discovers that he still has a part of innocence left.
People lie, can't help it.
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With Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood shakes the certainties of America's tired heroes
The film is pure and simple.
It bathes in a dull melancholy, scrolls at a quiet, obvious pace.
There is a kindness in this, a sentimental side which is not new to the director and which is evident today.
Clint Eastwood has nothing more to prove.
Time passes slowly, drop by drop, in ocher, dusty landscapes, with epiphanies, like this scene where broncos gallop along the road to pass the gringo's car or this image where we see the pensioner and the barmaid dancing in the middle of the tables, in an orange ray flooding the restaurant obliquely.
The sun is also rising.
Cock-a-doodle Doo!
"Cry Macho", a western by Clint Eastwood
With Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam, Daniel V. Graulau, Eduardo Minett
Duration 1 h 44
