(AFP) – With “Cry Macho”, in theaters Wednesday, Clint Eastwood, 91 years, goes back in saddle for a rodeo and redemption story, film that looks like a testament for a living Hollywood legend.
The film will not necessarily stay in the Hall of Fame for the actor and director mythical but it offers the opportunity to see him go back on horseback – a first since “Impitoyable”, western awarded at the Oscars in 1993 -, and even strike a punch .
Clint Eastwood plays the main character, Mike Milo, a former rodeo champion who lost wife and child and broke his back years earlier in an accident. Milo has been charged by his former boss with a final mission: to bring back to Texas his son Rafo, raised by his alcoholic mother in Mexico.
Cowboy hat on his head , the old gringo hits the road and crosses the border of an Eastwood-style Mexico where dust is everywhere, cops corrupt, and no one speaks a word of English.
There, he will find the boy, try to tame him – learning him in the process to train horses – while being pursued by the henchmen of Rafo’s mother.
Between the old cowboy and the young Mexican-American, a special relationship is formed, the first finding redemption and the second hope for a better life. The film is an opportunity for those who rose to fame in Sergio Leone’s westerns to reconnect with this old tradition. And to come back to the screen, three years after “The Mule.”
Prototype of the American hero, Clint Eastwood also seems to want to learn some lessons on the passage of time and the stars who turn pale, through the mouth of his character, who admits “not knowing how to cure old age”.
“Before you were strong, macho”, Rafo says, played by the young Mexican Eduardo Minett, on the road which leads them to Texas. “Before, I was a lot of things, I’m not anymore,” retorts Mike Milon. Before realizing that in life, “wanting to be a big tough guy is no use.”
