Movie reviews: 'Cry Macho' feels unambitious and lacking in drama

This week, TV pop culture critic Richard Crouse reviews new movies: 'Cry Macho,' 'Copshop,' 'Blue Bayou,' and 'The Mad Woman’s Ball.'

Clint Eastwood is a legendary in Hollywood for his no-nonsense approach to filmmaking. He’s not Stanley Kubrick who would do 200 takes of a head turn, or Christopher Nolan whose camera technique is sharp as a tack. His unfussy approach to storytelling often gives his films a unique energy all their own, a style born out of confidence and almost 70 years of standing in front of or behind a camera.

Depending on your level of cynicism, “Cry Macho,” his new road trip movie now playing in theatres, is either the work of a filmmaker so confident in his craft he trusts the audience will follow him wherever he goes, no matter how meandering, or a slender, slapdash exercise in myth building.

Set in 1979, the story begins when wealthy Texas ranch boss (Dwight Yoakam) calls in a favour from former employee Mike Milo (Eastwood). He wants the former rodeo star and ranch hand to travel to Mexico, find his estranged thirteen-year-old son Rafo (Eduardo Minett) and bring him back to the States. The boy’s mother (Fernanda Urrejola) is an aristocratic woman with a short temper who seems to care nothing about her son.

“Take him if you can find him,” she hisses. “He’s a monster.”