Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Dwight Yoakam, Natalia Traven, Fernanda Urrejola
Distributor: Warner Brothers
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2021
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mature themes

A retired cowboy travels to Mexico to find his boss’s son and bring him home. The boy and the cowboy bond as they travel back to Texas, waylaid for a time in a small town, helping out with training horses. A genial road story.

Audiences will not be surprised when they see ‘macho’ in the title and note that the film stars Clint Eastwood as well is being directed by him. There would be many memories of Clint Eastwood as macho in so many westerns and police films such as the Dirty Harry series.

This, however, is not really that kind of film at all. It is low-key and genial. Macho is the name of a rooster, a champion cockfighter, and Eastwood was 90 when he was filming. He is a bit stooped. He shuffles a bit as he walks. However, he has the opportunity to drive a car from Texas to Mexico and back to the border. He is seen on horseback (and his double doing quite some work in subduing horses). His character, Mike Milo, has always worked with horses, and has been a rodeo champion, but, as we see in a flashback, he literally suffered a backbreaking injury and is now in forced retirement.

This is a road film. Mike’s former employer commissions him to drive to Mexico City and bring back his young son, Rafo, (Minett). At first, this does not seem to be too difficult, though there is some drama in finding the boy and beginning the journey back to the Mexican-US border. During their adventurous road trip they have to hide in a small town – and the film slows along with them, and we spend some genial time there. They decide to sleep in a shrine to the Virgin Mary, giving Clint Eastwood the chance to raise some of the religious themes that he has in past films (Outlaw Josey Wales, Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby) and discussion about belief or not in God. They make the acquaintance of a widow (Traven) who runs a local café. She is friendly and invites them to stay with her. Mike makes the acquaintance of the woman’s granddaughters, and is able to use sign language to communicate with one of them, who is deaf-mute.

And another reason for staying in the town is that a horse owner has some wild horses that need training and Mike steps in. His time is also spent teaching Rafo to ride before making a final adventurous trip to the border.

On the final drive, talking about macho attitudes, Clint delivers a speech, touch of the homily, regrets concerning macho attitudes, downplaying them, declaring that they are overrated. At age 90, and having mellowed in the past two decades, he is entitled to Decry Macho!

While we are delayed with Mike and Rafo in the town, and we get to know Marta, the owner of the cafe, and begin to like her – and the film ends with a nice, genteel, affectionate dancing couple. Yes, by this time, Clint is entitled.