Cry Macho Review: Clint Eastwood’s Last Rodeo

Parts of “Cry Macho”, which takes place in 1979, are jaded in their naivety to do; a last minute car crash, for example, is fake enough to get you to start a Patreon to raise money for a one-day pick-up. The first scene exposes the premise of the story with extreme awkwardness. Dwight Yoakam plays Mike’s longtime rodeo boss, the Texas rider going after Mike’s battered rodeo veteran before we know anything about him. The screenplay comes from Nick Schenk (“Gran Torino”), freely adapting the 1975 novel, itself based on a screenplay by the late N. Richard Nash, best known for the film and 1950s stage favorite “The Rainmaker “. The exposure is as brutal as it gets. In a few steep lines, Yoakam tells us about Mike’s late wife and child, killed in a car crash, which has led to a downward spiral towards alcohol, pills, and the end of Mike’s career.