Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood, 2021)

An odd rooster, this. To start with the worst, women throw themselves at retired rodeo star Mike Milo, a character many decades younger than the 91-year-old Clint Eastwood who plays him. In a perfect world (to choose a redolent Eastwoodian phrase), that sentence would make no sense. But in that perfect world, we would enjoy the story a 91-year-old woman with men swooning over her. We would also enjoy her decades-long career as a director and bankable star. So while I applaud the unconventional relationships, the focus is on Eastwood and not the relationships. And certainly not the women either - the whorish Leta (Fernanda Urrejola) and the angelic Marta (Natalia Traven) are empty vessels for Eastwood who is always one.

But the structure of the film is perversely attractive. The long second act (at least it felt long; I didn't have a stopwatch) functions as a narrative oasis. Milo shacks up with Marta at a dusty café, retarding the progress in his mission to return the 13-year-old Rafo (Eduardo Minett) to his dad and Milo's former employer Howard (an equally dusty Dwight Yoakam). Slow dancing with Marta, teaching Rafo how to ride a horse, conversing with Marta's deaf grandchild, so little happens in this section that the more violent dénouement feels like a coda rather than a third act. Far from Eastwood's best but I'll take my shameless auteurist pleasures wherever I can get them.

Grade: B