Always Good Movies

Direction: Clint Eastwood
Country: USA

I have much respect for Clint Eastwood and his work both as an actor and a director, but Cry Macho lacks all the possible and necessary nerve to become acceptable, mostly due to the abominable script by Nick Schenk, the screenwriter of Gran Torino (2008) and The Mule (2018), who adapted N. Richard Nash’s 1975 novel of the same name. The comparisons between the three cited movies are flagrant.

It’s a contemporary western drama film composed of farcical situations, one after another, that made me disconnect from the story at a very early stage. The nonagenarian Eastwood stars as Mike Milo, a former Texan rodeo star turned grieving alcoholic turned recovered horse breeder who accepts to help his ex-employer, the rancher Howard Polk (country musician Dwight Yoakam), reunite with his delinquent 13-year-old son, Rafo (Eduardo Minett). According to his dad, the latter is being abused under the supervision of his irresponsible mother (Fernanda Urrejola).

Mike drives to Mexico City and manages to connect with the kid. Both embark on a colorless road trip back to the US, over the course of which I can’t point out one single scene that have worked in its plenitude. Each scenario feels totally fabricated, often overemotional and with tons of schmaltzy dialogue. Not to talk about the unflattering romance.

Eastwood should know his limits by now, and I can only encourage you to stay away from this lamentable misfire cooked with stale ingredients and weak performances in general.

Direction: Clint Eastwood
Country: USA

Once again (after J.Edgar, American Sniper, and Sully), reputable director Clint Eastwood got inspired by real events, putting out another biographical drama, this time centered on Richard Jewell, the security guard and police officer who, in the space of three days, went from national hero to main suspect of the bombing of the Centennial Olympic Park at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jewell, majestically embodied by Paul Walter Hauser, likes to state he’s a law enforcer. And that’s exactly what he is. Passionate about it and attentive to detail, this fast-food junkie is also a gun expert and a sharpshooter who believes in protecting people. He takes his job very seriously, and you can picture him as that sort of obsessive, overzealous guy whom everybody makes fun of. Yet, on the hot night of July 27, 1996, his suspicion about a green backpack lying underneath a bench in the cited park led to a partial evacuation of the place, avoiding hundreds of casualties and injuries in a terrorist attack.

With the manipulative FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) at the center of the investigation, Jewell is made a suspect with no reason other than his past and the sloppy assumption that he fits the profile of the lone bomber. The help comes from Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a pragmatic lawyer who had briefly crossed paths with Jewell in 1986, time when the film's narrative begins.

Eastwood and his writer Billy Ray (Captain Phillips; The Hunger Games) faced fierce contestation from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution newspaper for the way they outlined the methods used by late reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) in order to obtain relevant information.

Polemics aside, the director, prompted by an immediate and fluid storytelling, mounted some scenes that not always feel authentic. However, he makes a clear-eyed look about the failings and transgressions of American law enforcement agencies in their urgency to find a culprit. Hauser fuels this uneven account with an excellent performance.