Clint Eastwood
Cry Macho

Clint moves you, even when a clearly lesser film like this one unfolds on the screen. It moves you because cinema and life are habits he just can't quit. And so such films are more than anything else testimonials, epitaphs stubbornly carved, which indelibly fix the legacy of a man, long before that of a director-actor.

The effort of the ninety-year-old in shooting the action scenes (so to speak) has its perfect opposite in the naturalness with which he takes on the role, which is now the usual one of the senile phase: a grumpy old man who, however, knows how to understand, redeem himself, comprehend the injustices and fallacies of the society that has piled up around him, while he withered and his heart hardened. There's no need to explain much, to give the character a background, we already know him. And this time Clint doesn't even brush against the prejudice, the dark rancor of Gran Torino; the anger is softened, because the man lives in a limbo of demotivation, perceiving the absence of battles worth fighting for. Apathy removes him from any feeling, including resentment and anger.

The withered cowboy travels as usual along the ridge between a savvy, subdued America, and the bustling realities around, the problematic nooks, the lives of foreigners who still have not succumbed to the sadness of well-being. Today's frontier is that, in the tumultuous existences of those who struggle on the border that separates two worlds: between the stultifying peace of his own home, the once glorious faded photos of a past as a rodeo star, and the wild adventure of Mexico, the seemingly impossible mission of bringing a boy (Rafo) from scenarios of illegality and decay, total uprooting and distrust towards life, to a rediscovery of feelings, a careful construction of a moral compass, the never fully acquired ability to resist temptations. Mike must wrest Rafo from the clutches of a witch-like mother and deliver him to the father waiting for him across the border.

Good intentions are, as always, mixed with utilitarianism, convenient choices, duplicity (of some), but the adventure in any case can't help but be formative. It moves, it touches the heart, the ninety-year-old who still wants to throw punches, run away in stolen cars, hiding cleverly in closed saloons or in semi-forgotten little churches. Morality remains unassailable, and perhaps in some cases it brushes against the banality of grandpa's little lessons: this Clint Eastwood is truly mellowed, even when he imposes himself with harshness on the choices of the boy who, on the journey towards home, essentially learns to live, to use his skills and his weapons (including a fighting rooster) to achieve sensible goals, and no longer to be lost in illegality and resentment.

The dialectic of values, however, no longer has the savory taste of some recent masterpieces, because by now the Blond has chosen his battle; we already know which field he's treading, which path of civility interests him. The antagonism towards the US-branded system (but more generally, the false certainties of the Western world, now bloated and ever more distant from the truth of life) this antagonism is expressed this time right from the choice of locations: we are beyond the border, even the Yankee clothes are quickly shed. And if the coming-of-age journey with the young boy may seem predictable, our old man still manages to touch us deeply with a sentimental digression that surely was not foreseen. The sweetness of the gaze cast upon Mexican women and girls is worth a good part of the film.

Meanings and emotions peek into our hearts, but we must not avert our gaze from the intrinsic limits of this chapter of the great Eastwood saga. A somewhat clumsy script, full of not entirely effective, telegraphed lines, a language that doesn't fully convince. Yet the unoriginal screenplay (from a book by N. Richard Nash) is written by Nick Schenk, the same as Gran Torino and The Mule.

The aged cowboy is losing his touch, advancing a bit fatigued, but every step he lines up can't help but move us, those barely visible blue eyes under the brim of the hat have never been so sweet, so human.