We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
A late-era Clint Eastwood Western is one of Netflix’s biggest streaming hits. To be more specific, it’s a neo-Western, which is to say a more contemporary take on the genre containing Western themes but set in more modern times. The movie in question is “Cry Macho,” which won’t go down as the best Western ever directed by Eastwood, but it will probably go down as his last. That in itself makes it significant.
“Cry Macho” is currently sitting at the number 10 spot on Netflix’s most-watched movie charts, per FlixPatrol. It’s sitting just behind Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy” from 2017, which isn’t exactly remembered fondly but somehow continues to find an audience. In many ways, streaming viewership remains a great mystery.
The movie is based on the book of the same name by N. Richard Nash. It takes place in the late 1970s and focuses on a former rodeo star named Mike Milo (Eastwood) who takes a job from an ex‐boss to bring his young son home, taking him away from his alcoholic mom. Crossing rural Mexico on their back way to Texas, the unlikely pair faces an unexpectedly challenging journey.
Eastwood’s “Cry Macho” flopped in theaters five years ago, but there are many reasons for that. The box office was on life support during the pandemic and people weren’t heading back to theaters en masse at that time. It also didn’t help that Warner Bros. decided to premiere its entire 2021 movie slate on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day. That killed a lot of people’s motivation to leave the house, which was already low.
Cry Macho was the end of an era for Clint Eastwood
Be that as it may, more than five years later, people appear to be catching up with this one now that it’s on a new platform and available to watch from the comfort of home. The film’s current popularity speaks volumes about Clint Eastwood’s continued draw as an American cinema icon, both as an actor and a director. Westerns, in particular, have been the bread and butter for him dating back to his early days as an actor.
The legendary filmmaker has starred in many classics of the genre, including “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and “Unforgiven,” arguably the best movie directed by Eastwood. So even if “Cry Macho” wasn’t considered to be among his best works as a director, it still scratches an itch for viewers — especially viewers who have a certain nostalgia for Eastwood wearing a cowboy hat and boots.
/Film called “Cry Macho” an “old-fashioned cowboy drama” in our review from 2021. It was a mixed review overall, which is pretty much how most critics felt about it. What makes the movie significant, above all else, is that it’s probably going to serve as Eastwood’s swan song within the genre and could quite possibly mark his final on-screen performance. He’s well into his 90s and there is a decent chance he’s effectively retired at this point.
2024’s intense courtroom drama “Juror #2” was expected to be Eastwood’s final go-around as a director, which notably didn’t feature him as an actor. Bearing that in mind, it’s probably worth watching “Cry Macho” for a great many folks, if only as a send-off of sorts to one of the greatest to ever do it in the genre he’s mostly closely associated with.
You can also grab “Cry Macho” on 4K, Blu-ray, or DVD on Amazon.
Leave a Reply