CRY MACHO

BY: Amanda Jane Stern

It’s 1978 and Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood), a former rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder is enlisted by his old boss, Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam), to kidnap his young son away from the boy’s alcoholic mother in Mexico and bring him to Texas. Mike embarks on a perilous journey across rural Mexico with the young boy. Along the way, the two develop a bond and Mike takes the kid under his wing, and teaches him what it means to be a man. Thus is the premise of Eastwood’s newest neo-Western drama, Cry Macho. 

The story is based on the 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash, with a screenplay adapted by Nick Schenk (the pen behind Eastwood’s Gran Torino and The Mule). The film adaptation was considered for decades, with actors from Burt Lancaster and Pierce Brosnan to Arnold Schwarzenegger attached in the lead. In fact, Eastwood was attached to star in Cry Macho way back in 1988 but dropped out to reprise his role as Dirty Harry. After that, the film started shooting with Roy Scheider in the lead, but the project was never completed. It was also set to be Schwarzenegger’s return to acting following his years as California’s governor. But, it was scrapped after the fallout from Schwarzenegger’s affair and subsequent divorce. This leads us to 2020, thirty-two years after Eastwood was initially set as the lead, it finally came to fruition.

The movie shot on location in New Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, and actually wrapped early even while employing nearly 600 extras, following COVID safety protocols, and pairing Eastwood in scenes with a rooster. But we’re sure Eastwood had no trouble acting opposite a fowl scene partner, afterall we are still talking about his speech to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Cry Macho comes out in theaters and on HBO Max on September 17, 2021.